The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Charles Mallison's "great aunt" is simply referred to in this story: Mrs. Harriss has "spent ten years among what his great-aunt would have called the crowned heads of Europe" (168). There's no way to tell from the story, or from the larger history of the Stevens family in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, if she is related to Charles' mother or his father.

The "Negro butler" at the Harriss plantation opens the door to Gavin Stevens and Charles Mallison and "immediately vanishes" (249).

In this instance, the term "butler" is a euphemism, used somewhat facetiously to describe the subordinate gangsters who take part in the funeral services for Mr. Harriss: "eight or ten of the butlers in their sharp clothes and arm-pitted pistols brought him home to lie in state" (168).

According to the narrative, the end of Harriss' story follows a familiar pattern: "One morning your lawyer’s secretary telephones your wife long distance in Europe and says you just died sitting at your desk" (167). It seems likely that, even if Harriss died in a different way, the "secretary" referred to here exists, and did make this call to Mrs. Harris, who is in Europe at the time her husband dies.

According to the narrative, the end of Harriss' story follows a familiar pattern: "One morning your lawyer's secretary telephones your wife long distance in Europe and says you just died sitting at your desk" (167). It seems likely that, even if Harriss died in a different way, the "lawyer" referred to here exists.

Two of the story's characters spend time in Europe before or after the First World War. This icon represents the various Europeans whom they mention or are associated with during those travels. During the decade Mrs. Harriss and her two children spend in pre-War Europe, the contents of her letters home from Europe relate tales "of the families of the porters and waiters who had been kind or at least gentle with her and the children, and of the postmen who delivered the mail from home" (167).

The story treats "the men from town" who travel out to the Harriss plantation at various times to watch the construction and, later, the polo matches, as a separate group from the county people who are parts of the same group of spectators. Among these men are "merchants and lawyers and deputy sheriffs," who can spectate "without even getting out of their cars" (163).

The "farmers" of Yoknapatawpha are part of the story in two ways. As a larger group, they become part of the audience that watches as Mr. Harriss transforms a traditional county estate into a kind of Hollywood set. Some of them cross "the whole county" to watch the landscapers and builders at work (161), and "farmers" are specifically included in the groups of spectators who attend the sporting events that are staged there (163).

Joseph Conrad is a British writer best known for works such as The Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Describing the Parisian street where he once visited Mrs. Harriss, Gavin Stevens tells Charles Mallison that one can visit that street "simply by opening the right page in Conrad" (256).

These "two Negro boys" work on the Harriss plantation and "lay the trail of torn paper from one jump to the next" for the steeplechase (165). (The context makes it seem likely that these are men rather than "boys," and that that word should be understood as an example of how the Jim Crow culture used stereotypical language to demean black men.)