Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 09:01
"Sucker" is the generic term Montgomery Ward Snopes uses to refer to the kind of man who falls for Clarence and Virgil's scheme to cash in on Virgil's sexual "powers" (82). The one specific "sucker" who is mentioned during Monty's visit to Memphis is described as "a big operator, a hot sport" (92).
Devries is introduced as "a man from one of the eastern counties in our [Congressional] district" (133-34). Later the county is identified as "Minton County," a fictional place like Yoknapatawpha (137). When Faulkner included the events of this story in the novel The Mansion (1959), he renamed it "Cumberland County," also an invented name.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 08:54
The prostitutes who work at Miss Reba's. Only one, Thelma, is given a name (84). As a group they are imagined, in Montgomery Ward Snopes' narration, "running back and forth to the bathroom in nighties and negligees or maybe not even that," and also "screaming and fighting and pulling each other's hair" (81). According to Snopes, "so many" of them "came from little Tennessee and Arkansas and Mississippi country towns and Baptist and Methodist families" (83).
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 08:53
The maid who keeps order in Miss Reba's Memphis brothel. She has to wear a hat at all times because her husband beat her with a flatiron and "damn near tore her ear off with it" (89).
In "By the People" the war hero and anti-Snopes Congressional candidate named Devries is introduced as "a man from one of the eastern counties in our district" (133-34). Later in this story the county is identified as "Minton County," like Yoknapatawpha a fictional place (137). When Faulkner included the events of this story in the novel The Mansion he renamed the county Devries is from "Cumberland," also an invented name.
The "Merchants' and Farmers' Bank" is merely referred to in this story, in connection with Clarence Snopes' family (88). In other Yoknapatawpha fictions it is often called the Sartoris bank, having been founded by (Old) Bayard Sartoris.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Sat, 2017-10-21 08:49
The narrative mentions "all the neighborhood" around Miss Reba's in Memphis, but the people it lists in that category are not really neighbors, since they are all there on business: "the cop, the boy that brought the milk and collected for the paper, and the people on the laundry truck" (80).
