Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Fri, 2014-05-02 08:01
The minister of the Methodist Church in Jefferson, Parson Walthall protests the slaughter of the town's pigeons to prevent them from fouling the town clock.
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Fri, 2014-05-02 07:57
Readers never see the band that plays in the traveling show visiting Jefferson, but several of the novel's black characters talk about it, and in Jason's section both he and Uncle Job hear the music they are making. "That's a good band," Job says (248); "Dem folks sho do play dem horns" (230). Jason refers to the show's performers as "a bunch of Yankees" (230), but there's no clear evidence that they come from the North.
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Fri, 2014-05-02 07:55
Ab Russell is a Yoknapatawpha farmer, one of the few, Jason notes, who has plowed his cotton field by April 6, 1928. Jason walks across his field chasing his niece and the man in the red tie; after they let the air out of Jason's tire, Russell lends him a pump.
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Fri, 2014-05-02 07:31
Jason rages against the "every dam drummer" that comes to Jefferson, all of whom he imagines to have sexual relations with his niece, Quentin (239). "Drummer" is an archaic term for a salesman who travels from town to town. We know that Miss Quentin is sexually active, though these specific partners are products of Jason's imagination.
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Fri, 2014-05-02 07:28
I.O. Snopes is trading cotton in the in the commodities market when Jason goes into the telegraph office. In the later novel The Hamlet Faulkner will develop his character into one of the memorable members of the rapacious Snopes family, but in this novel he is, like Doc and Hopkins, simply another man anxious about the price cotton is selling for in New York.
