In Sanctuary, the woman who owns the limousine in which Popeye's grandmother leaves him becomes a kind of godmother to the child, making sure Popeye gets medical attention and often bringing him "to her home in afternoons and for holidays" (308). The narrative does not explain her motives in trying to help, but does show how they come to grief when her attempt to give him a birthday party is defeated by his violent antisocial behavior. Even after Popeye is sent to "a home for incorrigible children" (309), this woman continues to help Popeye's mother support herself (309).
Sanctuary refers generically to the various residents of Oxford who see Temple in the evenings, as she hurries to or from a date. The group includes "townspeople taking after-supper drives," "bemused faculty-members" and graduate students (28).
Chapter 21 of Sanctuary describes the various people whom Virgil and Fonzo see in the train station and on the streets of Memphis when they arrive in the city. None are given any individuality, but they are identified as "a stream of people" who "jostle" the newcomers in the depot, where they are also beset by cabmen and a redcap, and, in the Hotel Gayoso and another, unnamed hotel, a porter, bellboys, and "people sitting among the potted plants" in hotel lobbies (188-90).
Sanctuary describes the people who live in "the restricted district" of Memphis through which Red's funeral procession passes in terms of their "faces," which "peer from beneath lowered shades" as it goes by (249). While it is not absolutely clear what "restricted district" refers to, the point of this passage seems to be to juxtapose two worlds in Memphis: the underworld and the respectable (but intimidated) citizenry.
The man who works as a clerk in the university branch of the post office in Sanctuary is described as "young," with a "dull face," "horn[-rimmed] glasses" and "meticulous" hair (171). He tells Horace that Temple Drake has quit school. (Less than a decade before he wrote Sanctuary Faulkner himself had been the clerk in this post office.)
Miss Reba's description of the police commissioner who patronizes her brothel in Sanctuary is memorable: "a man fifty years old, seven foot tall, with a head like a peanut" (143). Her description of his behavior with one of her prostitute is even more unforgettable: when his cronies broke into the room "they found him buck-nekkid, dancing the highland fling" (143).
As Popeye and Temple approach the town of Dumfries in Sanctuary, they begin seeing other people on the road, though the narrative refers to them in a complex series of phrases. In some cases it cites the means of transportation rather than the people: "pleasure cars Sunday-bent," "Fords and Chevrolets," "now and then a wagon or a buggy" (139). The only occupants specifically mentioned are "swathed women" in the "occasional larger car" and "wooden-faced country people" in trucks (139).
In Sanctuary this servant works for the unnamed wealthy woman who befriends Popeye's mother. She is not specifically referred to as a Negro, but since nearly all the domestic servants in the fictions are black, we have chosen to identify her that way.
The policeman in Sanctuary from whom Popeye's grandmother asks for a match thinks her irrational statements (including the ominous "I bring down the house") are a deliberate effort at humor (307). He tells her three times that she "ought to be in vaudeville."
These are the various dancers and gamblers "at the crap table" (237) who are at the Grotto club the night Popeye takes Temple there in Sanctuary. The dancers are summed up in the phrase about the "movement of feet, the voluptuous hysteria of muscles warming the scent of flesh, of the blood" (233).
