The character whom this icon represents is first called "the other woman" (other than Judith, that is) whose photograph Charles Bon is carrying when he is killed (71). Mr. Compson calls her "the octoroon mistress" (75), Bon's "eighth part negro mistress" (80), and "a hereditary negro concubine" (168). Shreve (who as a non-Southerner is unfamiliar with the caste term "white trash," 147) refers to her as "the octoroon" (249, 286).
Sutpen's first wife, and the mother of Charles Bon, is not named in the narrative, but identified as "Eulalia Bon" in the novel's Genealogy (307). She is the "Haiti-born" daughter of a French sugar planter (268). When she first appears in the narrative, it is as "a shadow that almost emerged for a moment and then faded again" (199) - the elusiveness of this is entirely appropriate. Sutpen tells General Compson that her mother "had been a Spaniard" (203), but later tells his son Henry that in fact she was "part negro" (283), which is the reason why Sutpen felt he had to divorce her.
"A gaunt gangling man malaria-ridden with pale eyes and a face that might have been any age between twenty-five and sixty" (69). Wash Jones is described in the novel's genealogy as a "hanger-on of Sutpen" (308). Property-less, shiftless, illiterate, he claims to be "looking after Kernel's place" while Sutpen is fighting in the Civil War (225); after the war he works as a clerk in the small store Sutpen opens. As a poor white, he is forbidden to enter Sutpen's house - being turned away by a black, Clytemnestra, who "would not let him come into the kitchen with the basket even" (226).
The "hired lawyer" (245) who seems to be responsible for sending Charles Bon on a collision course with the Sutpen family is an extremely elusive figure. He may have been the "legal advisor and man of business" to Bon's mother in New Orleans in the 1850s (252) - or he may have been invented by Shreve and Quentin in a Harvard dorm room in 1910. Outside Chapter 8, the only hint of his existence is in Mr. Compson's ambiguous reference to "the shadowy figure of a legal guardian" in Bon's life (58).
Clytemnestra (Clytie) is the daughter of Thomas Sutpen and one of the two enslaved women he brings with him to Yoknapatawpha. She is first mentioned by Rosa, as the "negro girl" with a "Sutpen face" beside Judith Sutpen, Clytie's half-sister (22); later Rosa refers to her "Sutpen coffee-colored face" (109). Sutpen "named [Clytemnestra] himself," after a legendary Greek queen, though Mr. Compson "likes to believe" that Sutpen "intended to name her Cassandra," after another figure from Greek tragedy (48).
This "orderly" tells Henry that "the colonel wants you in his tent" (279). A military 'orderly' is a kind of personal servant to an officer, but the way this one addresses Henry - "Sutpen" (279) - makes it clear that he is white.
The "band [that] plays Dixie" which Shreve imagines is part of a "Decoration Day" ceremony "fifty years" after Bon's June visit to Sutpen's Hundred (262). "Decoration Day" is better known as "Confederate Memorial Day," out of which the U.S. Memorial Day holiday eventually came. It was first observed soon after the Civil War ended, and in fact is still unofficially observed in some places in the South - in April, however, not "June" (262).
The "chosen young girls in white dresses bound at the waist with crimson sashes" whom Shreve imagines are decked out for a "Decoration Day" ceremony "fifty years" after Bon's June visit to Sutpen's Hundred (262). "Decoration Day" is better known as "Confederate Memorial Day," out of which the U.S. Memorial Day holiday eventually came. It was first observed soon after the Civil War ended, and in fact is still unofficially observed in some places in the South - in April, however, not "June" (262).
The "veterans in the neat brushed hand-ironed gray and the spurious bronze medals that never meant anything to begin with" whom Shreve imagines are decked out for a "Decoration Day" ceremony "fifty years" after Bon's June visit to Sutpen's Hundred (262). "Decoration Day" is better known as "Confederate Memorial Day," out of which the U.S. Memorial Day holiday eventually came. It was first observed soon after the Civil War ended, and in fact is still unofficially observed in some places in the South - in April, however, not "June" (262).
