Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Fri, 2017-12-29 18:06
According to Gavin, there are "probably more people named Snopes or married to a Snopes" or indebted to a Snopes "than any other name in that section of Mississippi" - by which he may mean Frenchman's Bend or more likely all of Yoknapatawpha (291-291). Snopeses are a persistent element in Faulkner's imagination, from the beginning to the end of his career. In the Character data for The Town there are 25 entries for the Snopeses we can identify in some clear fashion.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Fri, 2017-12-29 16:03
One of Jefferson's oldest businesses, Christian's drugstore is owned by Willy Christian, the grandson of the original owner. Inside the store is a "prescription case where Uncle Willy kept the medicines" (162). He kept the "morphine in a little flimsy wooden drawer that anybody with a screwdriver or a knife blade or maybe just a hair pin could prize open, even though it did have a key to it that Uncle Willy kept hidden under a gallon jug marked Nux Vomica on a dark shelf that nobody but him was even supposed to bother because it was so dark back there" (163-64).
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Fri, 2017-12-29 15:51
For most of Yoknapatawpha's history, the Jefferson railroad station serves as the portal by which people come to and go out of the county. In this novel it is most important as the pass-through point for Byron Snopes' half-Apache children - they arrive at the station addressed to Flem Snopes, and depart through it when the town sends them back to El Paso.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Thu, 2017-12-28 18:46
Eula's mother is described by Gavin as a "big hard cold gray woman who never came to town anymore now [in 1927], spending all her time between her home and her church" (306). In Gavin's hypothetical account in Chapter 17, she is portrayed as outraged over the 'discovery' of her daughter's eighteen-year affair with Manfred de Spain, though Eula tells Gavin later that she thinks her "Mamma . . . has known all the time" (345). Also according to Gavin, Mrs.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Wed, 2017-12-27 18:48
Ratliff reports to Gavin that Will Varner had three biracial concubines, "the first Negroes in that section of the county and for a time the only ones he would permit there, by whom he now had grandchildren" (289).
The conductor in the novel's last scene motions for the four children of Byron Snopes to "mount "into the train (390). He does not seem to recognize them, so must be a different conductor from the man who was so glad to get them off the train.
"Miss Emily Habersham" arranges for Bryon Snopes' children to travel "back home, to Byron Snopes or the reservation or wherever it was" (389). She may be some kind of social worker, but that is not clearly suggested. Nor is her relationship to Miss Eunice Habersham explained.
Varner's store is a gathering place for the people who live in Frenchman's Bend. In the novel there are two references to the groups of men, specifically, who are found there. Gavin's hypothetical account of Mrs. Varner's visit to the store refers to the "few loungers" whom she chases out - these men "should have been in the field," since it's "planting time" (307). Later "the men squatting along the gallery" (388) - whom Ratliff also describes as a "few neighbors" (384) - rush off to rescue Clarence Snopes from Byron's children (388).
