The son of I.O. Snopes and his first wife, Montgomery Ward is extremely dishonest and selfish. When the U.S. enters World War I, he dodges the impending draft by joining Gavin Stevens for service with the Y.M.C.A. in France, where he "looks around" at the opportunities offered by the war (111). Eventually he sets up a brothel in Paris.
Clarence is the son of I.O. Snopes and his second wife and brother to Vardaman and Bilbo Snopes. According to Ratliff, he is "a big hulking man now eighteen or nineteen, who was all a gray color" (386). He is "the only Snopes or resident of Frenchman's Bend or Yoknapatawpha County either for that matter" to welcome Byron Snopes' wild children - who in turn try to burn him at the stake (387).
Gavin tries to convince Linda Snopes to leave Mississippi to attend one of "the smart 'finishing' schools north of Mason's and Dixon's" (221). The Mason-Dixon line, named for the two surveyors who drew it in the 1760s, is often used to represent the boundary between The North and The South as two parts of the U.S. As examples of the schools he has in mind, Gavin lists "Bennington and Bard and Swarthmore" (224). Our icon appears on the Vermont site of Bennington, an all-female college until after the novel was published.
Gavin Stevens wryly concedes that he knows the "young" Mr. Stone, "even if he did go to New Haven" (342). The reference is to Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, traditional Ivy League rival of Harvard, where Gavin himself went.
In The Town Gavin Stevens tries to convince Linda Snopes to leave Mississippi to attend college in Virginia or at one of "the smart 'finishing' schools north of Mason's and Dixon's" (221). The Mason-Dixon line, named for the two surveyors who drew it in the 1760s, is often used to represent the boundary between The North and The South as two distinct parts of the U.S. As examples of the northern schools he has in mind, Gavin lists "Bennington and Bard and Swarthmore" (224). Bennington in Vermont was an all-female college until after the novel was published.
"Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain," in northern Georgia and southern Tennessee, were the locations of two major Civil War battles fought in the fall of 1863 (152).
Three different locations in California, and California itself as a destination, are mentioned in The Town. "California" is linked with "Texas" and "Mexico" as a place to run away to (346). Chick references "San Francisco's Chinatown" - "half the world or anyway half the continent" away - when he notes that these is one "Chinaman" who lives in Jefferson; "we all knew about San Francisco's Chinatown" (321) - "we" of course being the white townspeople. And the "limousines" at the funeral of Melisandre Backus' husband would not have shamed "Hollywood itself" (187).
When World War I ends, the event is celebrated with the ringing of "the courthouse bell" and "all the church bells too," on all "the Sunday steeples" around town (118). This icon represents those various churches. One of them would be the Episcopal church, mentioned separately in the novel as "the oldest extant building in town" (321). The novel does not mention the denomination of any of these other churches, but the other three main denominations in Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha are Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian - all Protestant.
