The character in "Ad Astra" named Hume is probably another Allied aviator, but in the story his role is to narrate the way Sartoris managed to avenge his brother's death.
In "Ad Astra," Franz is the elder of a pair of twins who are younger brothers to the captured German officer. When his older brother refuses to become baron, Franz, as next in line, is passed over because he is already committed to the career of a military officer. Franz becomes baron designate when the younger twin is killed in Berlin by a jealous husband. Franz progresses through the ranks from colonel to "general of staff" (419), but near the end of the War is assassinated by a German soldier in Berlin.
The name "Das" is a common South Asian name, derived from Sanskrit. One of its meanings, however, is 'servant,' so it may be used by the subadar in "Ad Astra" not as a name but as a kind of title or label. In either case, this character is "the headman" who supervises the native military personnel; after the battalion's disastrous attack on German lines, he reluctantly admits to the subadar that his troops crossed No Man's Land with unloaded rifles, and almost their entire batallion was annihilated (425).
William Avery Bishop (1894-1956) led all Canadian aviators during World War I, being credited with shooting down 72 German planes. The captive German aviator of "Ad Astra" reports that one of his younger brothers, an ace pilot himself, "iss killed by your Bishop . . . that good man" (419).
Quentin's narrative in "That Evening Sun" begins by evoking the "Negro women" who used to carry the clothes they had washed for their white customers in bundles on their heads (289); now they fetch and deliver it in automobiles or have lost their jobs to commercial laundry services.
In the old days described by Quentin's narrative in "That Evening Sun," the husbands of the town's Negro laundresses sometimes "fetch and deliver" the clothes their wives have washed (290).
This "queen" is the protagonist of the grim fairy tale that Nancy begins to tell the Compson children (302). Like Nancy, she "has to cross a ditch to get into her house quick and bar the door," but is afraid of the "bad man" who is hiding in the ditch (303). The question of the racial identity of these characters is not definitively answerable, but given how closely Nancy's tale is drawn from her own immediate life, it seems appropriate to make both the villain and the heroine of it black. This "queen" then is the only upper class Negro character in Faulkner's fiction.
This "bad man" is the antagonist of the story - a kind of grim fairy tale - that Nancy begins to tell the Compson children (302). The question of the racial identity of this man, and the "queen" who also appears in Nancy's unfinished story, is not definitively answerable, but given how closely Nancy's tale is drawn from her own immediate life, it seems appropriate to make both the villain and the heroine of it black.
In "That Evening Sun," Nancy tells the Compson children that "I got my coffin money saved up with Mr. Lovelady" - or as Quentin's narrative explains, Mr. Lovelady is "a short, dirty man who collected the Negro insurance, coming around to the cabins or the kitchens every Saturday morning, to collect fifteen cents" toward a fund to pay for their funerals (308). He lives at the hotel with his wife and only daughter. Though he and his family occupy only part of a paragraph, the details of their story are provocative: Mrs. Lovelady commits suicide, and after leaving town with his daughter, Mr.
Mrs. Lovelady, the wife of the white man who collects insurance money from the local Negroes in "That Evening Sun," commits suicide "one morning" (308). Quentin's narrative gives no further account or explanation of that act.
