Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Sun, 2017-12-31 17:45
Georgie's grandpa lives in Mottstown, a small town featured in several of Faulkner's fictions. Every Christmas, Georgie's family, including their black cook, visits Grandpa. There is no way to tell from the text how large the house itself is. It seems like a large structure capable of accommodating three generations of the family: besides Georgie and his parents on their visit, Grandpa's grown children, Rodney and Louisa, live there - Louisa with her husband and children. Grandpa himself seems to have lived there for many years.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Sat, 2017-12-30 20:04
Historically, Robert Green Ingersoll was a late 19th-century orator and philosopher nicknamed "The Great Agnostic," whose rejection of Christianity was widely discussed in his day and in Faulkner's. In this story, he acts mostly as a sounding board for the Judge's lifelong uncertainty regarding God and the afterlife; he listens to what the Judge says about his life and ideas, but he does not offer any solutions or answers, merely telling the Judge to follow the young woman and "Look into her face" (791).
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Sat, 2017-12-30 19:49
When the Judge returns home from Beyond he hears "the drone of a voice" in another room as he slips back into "his clothes," "recently pressed" for his funeral (797). The voice and the smell of flowers in the air indicate that the Judge's funeral is being held in his home; the speaker could be a minister (the Judge says that he still occasionally attends church) or another political or civic figure.
