Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2012-04-03 10:48
Legendary progenitor of the Sartoris family, and one of the central characters in Yoknapatawpha's history. Born the eldest male in "Carolina," he had a brother, Bayard, and apparently several sisters, the youngest of whom, Virginia Du Pre, came to live with his family in 1869. He arrived in Jefferson around 1837, where he built a large plantation home four miles north of town.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2012-04-03 10:48
Byron is identified as a cousin of Flem Snopes, and like Flem has come to Jefferson from the area around Frenchman's Bend. Both Narcissa Benbow and the narrator note that he has "reddish hair which clothes his arms down the the second joints of his fingers" (101). He writes Narcissa anonymous love letters, spies into her windows at night, and on his last night in Jefferson breaks into her bedroom and lies on her empty bed, "writhing and making smothered, animal-like noises" (276).
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2012-04-03 10:48
An elderly black Servant, father of Elnora and Caspey, and Bayard Sartoris' coachman and butler. The novel's narrator says Simon was three when he watched his grandfather Joby bury the Sartoris silver, which must have occurred around 1863 when the fall of Vicksburg made Mississippi vulnerable to Union troops. But although he was born a slave, Simon seems to long for the old plantation: in the novel he continues to talk, respectfully, to his former master, Colonel John Sartoris, even though "Marse John" has been dead for more than forty years (112).
Submitted by sek4q@virginia.edu on Sun, 2012-04-01 18:07
This small sharecropper cabin on the De Spain plantation is located at some distance from the mansion: "In the early afternoon the wagon stopped before a paintless two-room house identical almost with the dozen others it had stopped before even in the boy's ten years. . ." (8). One of Sarty's sisters proclaims that the cabin "likely ain't fit for hawgs" (8). There are two beds, but Sarty, his sisters and his aunt sleep "on pallets on the floor" (14).
Submitted by sek4q@virginia.edu on Sun, 2012-04-01 17:50
This small sharecropper cabin on the De Spain plantation where Ab Snopes and his family live briefly is located at some distance from both the landlord's mansion and the barn Ab burns. The narrator of "Barn Burning" describes it as "a paintless two-room house identical almost with the dozen others" that the family had lived in during a decade of moving from place to place as tenant farmers. One of Ab's daughters proclaims that the cabin "likely ain't fit for hawgs" (9); when Ratliff retells this story in The Hamlet, it is Ab himself who says that (15).
