The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The African Americans who work the land at the Harriss plantation are variously referred to in the story as "croppers" and "tenants" (163). As the owners of the land, both Mrs. Harriss' father and her husband use this system, which became widespread across the South in the aftermath of Emancipation. The narrative notes that Mrs. Harriss' father managed the system in such a way that "a plow-team and its driver from the field could be spared" to drive the white family's carriage - an "old battered Victoria" - whenever his daughter wanted to go to Jefferson (155). Mr.

In its description of the people who watch the polo matches at the Harriss plantation the narrative includes (among the "farmers" and "the tenants and renters and croppers") a group it calls "the landholders" (163). This presumably refers to the owners of the farm land that is worked by the tenants, renters and sharecroppers, though Faulkner usually refers to them as landlords or land owners - or "planters," the word he uses elsewhere in the story: "the bottomland planters" (251).

This "caretaker" at the Harriss estate is "not the old one, the first renter" - the man from Memphis we identify as Caretaker(1), who farms the land - but "a fat Italian or Greek" from New Orleans, "who lives in the house all the time," even when it is otherwise empty (162). Harriss calls him "his butler"; when guests arrive he waits on them wearing "a four-in-hand tie of soft scarlet silk" and carrying "a pistol loose in his hip pocket" (162).

After rebuilding his house, Mr. Harriss "begins to bring friends up from New Orleans" (162); "strange outlanders" (163); "men and the women with a hard, sleek, expensive unmarried air and look about them even when now and then some of them really were married to each other perhaps" (163).

The white man who rents the Harriss plantation decides after a year to bring "his own Negro farm-hands" from Memphis to work the land (160). It seems as if they are wage laborers (who are paid by the day or month) rather than sharecroppers or tenant farmers (who are paid by a share of the crop they raise), but that is not made explicit.

The nursemaid who takes care of Mrs. Harriss's first child, Max, is "a light-colored Negress a good deal smarter, or at least snappier-looking than any other woman white or black either in Jefferson" (158). Like the family's chauffeur, this nurse is another sign of Mr. Harriss' conspicuous consumption.

The Harriss' chauffeur is described as "a strange Negro in a uniform who did nothing but drive and wash and polish" the automobile (158). ("Strange" in this context means 'not native to Yoknapatawpha.) Both the car and the chauffeur are signs of Mr. Harriss’ conspicuous consumption.

Robert Markey is "a lawyer and in city politics too, who had been at Heidelberg" with Gavin Stevens and now lives in Memphis (201). Gavin contacts him for assistance in keeping track of Max Harriss when he goes to Memphis.

Paoli is a "famous Italian fencing-master" (169) and, according to his sister, Max Harris "had been the best pupil Paoli had had in years" (190).

Over 3000 U.S. servicemen were killed or wounded during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but this entry reflects the unusual way that Charles Mallison recalls December 7th, 1941: "a Jap dropped a bomb on another American" (254).