In an odd twist, after Mink's conviction in The Mansion, this District Attorney who prosecuted Mink meets with Mink's lawyer and the judge who oversaw the trial to try to figure out what kind of sentence to give him, for Mink's sake and the public's.
The young district attorney who prosecutes Monk at his murder trial in "Monk" cares more about his conviction rate than justice. The narrator calls attention to his ambitiousness, stating that he "had his eye on Congress" (41).
These "delegates" in "Monk" are unofficial, members of what the narrator calls "the Opposition" to the state Governor's high-handed and corrupt policies (54). They attend the meeting of the Governor's Pardon Board as moral witnesses. Gavin Stevens is one of these delegates. Given the detail that this Governor is "a man without ancestry" (53), it seems likely that the group is made up of other men like Stevens, men from families with long-standing and aristocratic pedigrees.
Although the only examples in "Monk" of the political hacks whom the state's new Governor is elevating to positions of power are the men on the Parole Board, Stevens sees that group as representative of the "battalions and battalions of factory-made colonels" now running the government (63).
This "woman with hard, bright, metallic city hair and a hard, blonde, city face" comes to Yoknapatawpha in "Monk" when Mrs. Odlethrop's son returns home after a long absence (43). The word "city" in that description suggests she is from Memphis, or someplace similar, but that is not made clear in the story. Nor can we say for sure that she is Monk's mother, though the fact that the infant Monk is seen at the Odlethrops' shortly after she and the son leave - for unknown reasons, though perhaps because Mrs.
At his murder trial in "Monk," Bill Terrel tries to blame his son for the crime. This son both denies the charge and "proves an alibi," resulting in his father's conviction (59).
In "Monk" Bill Terrel is described as "a tall man, a huge man, with a dark aquiline face like an Indian's except for the pale yellow eyes and a shock of wild, black hair" who speaks in a "queer, high, singsong filled with that same abject arrogance" that characterizes his appearance (55). He convinces Monk to kill the Warden. He seems to serve as a foil for Monk - Terrel owns a gas station, and Monk works at one; he yearns for a pardon, and Monk refuses one; he trusts no one, and Monk trusts everyone.
Presumably Monk's grandmother, Mrs. Odlethrop lives like a hermit with Monk and seems fiercely protective of him. People tell of how she chased her son and Monk's mother "out of the house and out of the country" with a shotgun because that son was "too much even for that country and people" (43).
