The radical abolitionist John Brown fought against slavery in the West before carrying out the raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 that was intended to inspire a slave rebellion in the South. He is not mentioned in Light in August, but Joanna Burden's grandfather is clearly one of his partisans during the pro- and anti-slavery fighting that made Kansas 'Bleeding' or 'Bloody Kansas' in the early 1850s.
There are five characters in the fictions identified only as "Joe." This one lives in Memphis, where he is the proprietor of the Grotto club in Sanctuary (247); he is bald, and lacks culture (he thinks "The Blue Danube" is a blues song, for example, 244), but he does his best to keep Red's funeral as dignified as possible.
There are five characters identified only as Joe in the fictions. This one appears in Intruder in the Dust, where both Edmunds and the narrator call him a "boy"; he is even referred to at one point as "Edmunds' boy," a loaded phrase in the cultural context of Faulkner's world, but in the immediate narrative context this means 'the boy that Edmunds mentioned' rather than defining a family relationship or the dynamic of an interracial relationship. Joe is the son of one of the tenant farmers on Edmunds' plantation (4, 5, etc.). The name Lucas calls him by is Joe (7).
There are five characters in the fictions identified only as "Joe." This one has the most significant role to play as the unlikely agent of justice in "Hand upon the Waters." He is “a man not large, but with tremendous arms and shoulders; an adult, yet with something childlike about him” (68). Like Lonnie Grinnup, Joe has severe mental disabilities, being “deaf and dumb” (68). Joe, an “orphan” (70, 71), was “adopted” by Lonnie Grinnup, and he remains fiercely loyal to Lonnie after Lonnie's death.
There are five characters in the fictions identified only as "Joe." This one is the deputy who drives the sheriff's car back to town after Cotton has been captured in "The Hound" (163). Presumably the same deputy is the one driving the car earlier, when it picks up the sheriff at Varner's store. No other details about him are given.
There are five characters identified only as "Joe" in the fictions. This Joe is the young bookkeeper who plays tennis with Horace and Frankie at Belle Mitchell's in Flags in the Dust.
Jody Varner appears in seven different fictions, as the manager of Varner's Store and the brother of Eula Varner. In both those roles he is not a prepossessing figure. It's always clear that his father Will is the owner of the store; the most original thing Jody does during his tenure is to hire Flem Snopes as a clerk - though that turns out to be his biggest mistake. The narrator of "Spotted Horses" predicts at the time that in ten years, "it would be Jody clerking for Flem Snopes" (166); it doesn't take Flem nearly that long to displace him, though Jody remains the nominal manager.
In "Raid" and again in The Unvanquished, Jingus is a slave of the Hawks, who live in his cabin after their main house was burned down by Union troops. On Bayard's previous visit to Hawkhurst, Jingus showed him the railroad. It is not known if he is still at Hawkhurst at the time of this visit, or if, like numerous other Negroes in the story who emancipate themselves, he has decided to follow the Union army when it moves on.
In The Hamlet one of the deputies who help the Sheriff capture Mink is named Jim. He drives the surrey in which they carry the prisoner back to Jefferson.
In "Fool about a Horse," this Jim is Pat Stamper's assistant in the horse- and mule-trading business. We hear him called "Jim" only once, by Stamper (130); the narrator refers to him instead with variations of "that nigger" (127, etc.) But it's important to note that the narrator's vocabulary tells us a lot about the racist world in which the narrator has grown up, but nothing about the man named Jim. In addition to that word, the narrator calls him a "magician" and "a artist" (123, 127). Jim displays a genius for "doctoring" horses and mules to disguise their flaws.
