Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Sat, 2018-04-14 10:06
Located somewhere in Frenchman's Bend, this "empty cotton house" is where the "a posse of enraged fathers" finds Wesley 'Actual Schoolmaster' Snopes having sex with "a fourteen-year old girl" in the last two volumes of the Snopes trilogy (The Town, 43). A "cotton house" is a crude structure built in or next to a cotton field, where the cotton can be stored as it's picked in the fall before being taken to the gin; it would be "empty" most of the year.
As a young man Tyler Ballenbaugh "went out West," where he is rumored to have won a lot of money "gambling at cards" (75). This location represents that generic "West" - a familiar place in America's cultural mythology: a land of the particular kind of opportunity implied by "violence," "gambling," and vast "sums" (75).
When the young Thomas Sutpen decides to leave his family in eastern Virginia for a new land of opportunity, he doesn't 'go west' - he goes south to the West Indies. This is probably Faulkner's ironic take on the familiar cultural trope that young men go west to find or make their fortunes, on "The West" as a place both on a map and in the national psyche.
Submitted by jburgers@gc.cuny.edu on Sat, 2018-04-14 09:07
These "dozen trusties" in the Parchman penitentiary are not described in any detail (74), but "trusty" is the generic term for prison inmates who can be trusted to help the authorities administer the institution. They are typically given (minor) privileges and allowed (limited) freedoms that other inmates aren't. Montgomery Ward Snopes assumes Flem could bribe one of them to kill Mink for "ten grand" - ten thousand dollars (74).
