Character Keys

"The fellow in the radio talking" - this is how the narrator of "Two Soldiers" refers to the announcer who reports on the bombing of Pearl Harbor (81).

When Mrs. McKellogg takes the young vernacular narrator of "Two Soldiers" back to what he calls "her house" (obviously, an apartment house, 97), he notes that the "little room without nothing in it" (obviously an elevator) is operated by "a nigger dressed up in a uniform a heap shinier than them soldiers had" (obviously the operator, 97). With the exception of the narrator's reference to Negro cabins on the outskirts of Jefferson (88), the Negro employees of the apartment building provide the story's only (linguistically racist) mention of race.

In "Two Soldiers," when the Grier boy arrives at the place in Memphis where "folks join the Army" (9) - i.e. the Memphis recruiting station - he sees "two fellers standing . . . and some more folks there, I reckon . . . It seems to me I remember some more folks there" (94). The iteration seems Faulkner's way of suggesting how many young men are responding to their country's need in a time of war.

This second "bus feller" in "Two Soldiers" is the driver of the bus that the narrator takes from Jefferson to Memphis (93).

One of the soldiers encountered by the narrator of "Two Soldiers" in the Memphis recruiting station is a lieutenant: "he had on a belt with a britching strop over one shoulder" (94). This leather band over the right shoulder is also called a "backing strop" by the boy (95); the story uses it to indicate an officer's rank.

The McKelloggs in "Two Soldiers" have sent their young son to "a school in the East," according to Mrs. McKellogg (98). The age affinity of the two boys may explain Mrs. McKellogg's interest in the Grier boy.

In "Two Soldiers" Mrs. McKellogg functions somewhat as the Memphis version of Mrs. Habersham, intervening on behalf of the Grier boy. The narrator notes that she is wearing "a fur coat, but she smelled all right" (97). She provides him with food and a ride back to Frenchman's Bend.

The older of the "two ladies in fur coats" in "Two Soldiers" whom Mr. Foote summons to help with the Grier boy (90). She may be a social worker, like the younger woman, or as is more likely, just a caring member of the community. Her family name is one of the oldest in Yoknapatawpha. Because the is wearing a "fur coat" and is apparently married, we assume she is not Miss Habersham, the impoverished "spinster of seventy" in Intruder in the Dust (92) and elsewhere.

As he waits for Dr. Schofield to amputate his injured leg in "The Tall Men," Buddy McCallum recalls the time he was wounded during World War I: "there was a heap" of American soldiers lying "outside a field dressing station" waiting for medical attention (51).

In "The Tall Men," when Buddy McCallum thinks that his sons are being called up for active duty in wartime, he tells them to obey their "sergeants and officers," adding, "The Government done right by me in my day, and it will do right by you" (53).

Neither Buddy's wife nor her parents appear directly in "The Tall Men." Mr. Gombault notes that Buddy's wife isn't buried in the McCallum family graveyard: "Buddy's wife wanted to be buried with her folks. I reckon she would have been right lonesome up here with just McCallums" (60).

Neither Buddy's wife nor her parents appear directly in "The Tall Men." Mr. Gombault notes that Buddy's wife isn't buried in the McCallum family graveyard: "Buddy's wife wanted to be buried with her folks. I reckon she would have been right lonesome up here with just McCallums" (60).

There are several references in "The Tall Men" to "county agents" in general. This is "the county agent's young fellow" who visits the McCallums periodically to explain the new federal programs that regulate agricultural production (57). He works for the federal government as part of the Roosevelt administration's efforts during the Depression to improve farm practices in places like the deep South. To the McCallums, this is the "the Government" that wants to "interfere with how a man farmed his own land" (55).

At first sight Dr. Schofield "might have been any city doctor, in his neat city suit" (49). During his house call to see about Buddy McCallum's injured leg in "The Tall Men," Dr. Schofield proves himself a practical physician who is sensitive to the wants and needs of his patients. He trusts Buddy's judgment concerning the amputation of his leg and, in doing so, provides a contrast with Mr. Pearson's distrust and misjudgment of the family as a whole.

In "Go Down, Moses" and the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Gavin Stevens calls the warden at the penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, to gather information about Samuel Beauchamp.

In both "Go Down, Moses," and the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, Gavin remembers that "the papers of [the] business" with Samuel Worsham Beauchamp went to "the District Attorney" (258, 354).

Apparently except for Fentry, the workers at Quick's sawmill in Frenchman's Bend are all black. At least, when Isham Quick describes Fentry's arrival at the mill in "Tomorrow," he says he did "the same work" and drew "the same pay as the niggers done" (103). (In the larger Yoknapatawpha context, this is an exception to the usual absence of Negroes, except for a few domestic servants, in the Frenchman's Bend area.)

In "Tomorrow," according to Pruitt, when Stonewall Jackson Fentry left his father's farm to try "to earn a little extra money" working at a sawmill in Frenchman's Bend, he made some kind of arrangement with this unnamed black man to help on the farm in his stead. Pruitt tells Gavin Stevens he often heard the father "cussing" the man "for not moving fast enough" in the field, but when two years later the son brings the baby home, the Fentrys continue to employ him for a season (97).

In Quick's account of Buck Thorpe's life in Frenchman's Bend in "Tomorrow," he mentions "about a half a dozen" other young men who both fought with Thorpe and often sat on the gallery at Varner's store listening to and laughing at his talk (109). The fighting is described as violent - he beats his adversaries "unconscious from time to time by foul means and even by fair on occasion" - and the talking is described as drunken (109).

In "Tomorrow" Pruitt tells Gavin Stevens that Fentry's "grandpa" worked the family's small, poor farm "until he died between the plow handles" working in the field (97). He was probably the first Fentry to settle in Yoknapatawpha.

This unnamed lawyer, appointed by the District Attorney to prosecute the case against Bookwright in "Tomorrow," is content merely to go through the required motions, presenting the evidence in less than an hour and only "bowing to the court" rather than presenting a closing argument (92). Like (almost) everyone else in the courtroom, he believes Bookwright should be acquitted.

The young man whom Bookwright shoots for seducing his seventeen-year-old daughter in "Tomorrow" was named "Jackson and Longstreet Fentry" for the first three years of his life (100). Born to a homeless poor-white woman given shelter by Jackson Fentry, he is raised by Fentry until age three, when he is reclaimed by his mother's family, the Thorpes. He grows up to be the ne'er do well Buck who appears in Frenchman's Bend "from nowhere," and is described as "a brawler, a gambler," a moonshiner and a cattle thief (90).

In "Tomorrow" this wandering poor-white, pregnant woman is given shelter and aid by Jackson Fentry at Quick's Sawmill. He calls her "Miss Smith" when asked her name by someone else (99). Though initially she says she is already married, right after her baby is born she marries to Fentry and almost immediately dies (105). When her brothers turn up years later looking for the child, we learn her maiden name is Thorpe.

The judge at Fentry's trial in "Tomorrow" is referred to by name by the narrator's "grandfather" (93), but he is not described. He is so sure that Bookwright will quickly be acquitted that he "doesn't retire" to his chambers when the jury begins deliberating (92).

The father of Stonewall Jackson Fentry in "Tomorrow" is a farmer at "the very other end" of Yoknapatawpha from Frenchman's Bend (90). He is Confederate veteran who fought under both Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet, as the names of both his biological and his adopted sons reveal.

These are the unnamed hunters in "The Old People," referred to only as "two or three others," who are part of the yearly De Spain hunting party that also includes the Major, the narrator's father, Uncle Ike McCaslin and Walter Ewell (205).

The grandfather of the boy hunter who is the narrator as well as Sam's apprentice in "The Old People" and just the apprentice hunter in "The Bear" is briefly mentioned, but his name is not given in either text nor is much else about him explained except that (in the first story) he lived in "the same country" and had "grown up" and "lived" in "almost the same manner" as his grandson (202), and that in "The Bear" his grandson carries an "old, heavy, biscuit-thick silver watch which had belonged to his grandfather" (289).

The "two or three companions of [Ikkemotubbe's] bachelor youth" who meet him at the "river" upon his return from New Orleans are briefly mentioned by in "The Old People" (202) and again (as "three or four companions") in Go Down, Moses (157-58).

In "The Old People," Jimbo is a servant of Major de Spain's who accompanies the white men on their yearly hunting trips into the big woods. He helps Uncle Ash with the cooking and with the dogs. (When Faulkner re-tells the events of the short story in Go Down, Moses, Jimbo's character is replaced by "Tennie's Jim," who has a place on the McCaslin family tree.)

Will and Maggie Varner have produced sixteen children. Jody and Eula are important characters in The Hamlet and other texts. The remaining fourteen children are summarily described as "scattered, married and buried, from El Paso to the Alabama line" (6). Will suggests that this "mess of children" are largely male, a "passel of boys" who "soon as they got big enough to be worth anything . . . done married and moved away" (339).

This "somebody" in The Hamlet hears De Spain "passing in the road" as he hurries toward his burning barn (18).

in The Hamlet Will Varner is having an ongoing affair with the "middle-fortyish wife of one of his own tenants" (156).

For some reason that The Hamlet does not provide, this "white man" chases a Negro across the platform at a "bleak" train station and shoots him "in the body with a blunt pistol" (138).

In The Hamlet, a few days after Hoake McCarron's father is "shot in a gambling house," a rumor arises that "a woman had shot him" (150). No evidence is given to support the rumor, but if it's true, then the context makes it likely that she is a prostitute.

The "two officers" mentioned in The Hamlet as accompanying Mink in his courtroom appearances are probably deputy sheriffs, but the novel uses the term "officers" to name them (287, 367).

Throughout The Hamlet there is a steady flow of tradesmen, drummers, farmers, and other wayfarers who stay at Mrs. Littlejohn's. This entry represents the majority of them, who are not individualized in any way.

The tenant farmers on Varner's properties in The Hamlet are described as "patient earth-reeking men" who meet with their landlord each year after they have gathered the crop they raised on his land "to accept almost without question whatever Varner should compute he owed them for their year's work" (67).

This entry represents the children of Frenchman's Bend in The Hamlet who attend the local school at various times, from Reconstruction to the novel's present day. According to the narrator, these boys and girls walk "back and forth in all weathers" (108) to the community schoolhouse. Many of these schoolchildren have no use for the institution at all, especially for their alcoholic professor. When Labove takes over the school, he instills discipline among the students and has a number of the "older boys" (124) build a basketball court.

In The Hamlet Ratliff's widowed sister keeps house for him in Jefferson. Neither her first nor her married name is mentioned. While there is little to define her physical appearance, Faulkner describes her "mute and outraged righteousness" when she is forced to live with Mink Snopes' wife and her two children (286). She is offended that Ratliff permits Mink's wife to do some of the housework (287).

In The Hamlet the orphaned Lucy Pate was raised by this remote relation; she imbued Lucy with the "domestic skill" of a "country heritage" and the values of "constancy and devotion" (227).

The owner of the logging camp where Mink works in The Hamlet "lives openly" with a quadroon woman "most of whose teeth were gold" and who superintends the kitchen (262). (The term 'quadroon' appears in a lot of American literature before the Civil Rights movement; it was used to label a person with three white and one black grandparents. Faulkner scholarship uses the term to identify the woman in Absalom, Absalom! with whom Charles Bon has a child, but we identify her in this index as Mrs. Charles Bon.)

Like a number of crowds or groups of people in The Hamlet, the folks who ride various wagons on various roads in and around Frenchman's Bend cannot be individualized or broken up into smaller groups.

This is the crowd at the "bleak" railroad station in The Hamlet where Labove sees a white man shoot a black man; it "scatters" as the shooting occurs, then forms a "crowd" around the Negro so dense that Labove has to "use his football tactics" to move through it. Some of them also "overpower and disarm" the white man (138).

According to Varner in The Hamlet, this "old woman" told his "mammy" that if "a woman showed her belly to the full moon," she would have "a gal" (339).

When Mink is jailed in Jefferson in The Hamlet, Ratliff invites Mink's wife and two children to stay in the house owned by him and his sister. The two Snopes children are "dressed in cast-off garments of his [Ratliff's] nephews and nieces" (288) when their mother takes them to visit their father in jail.

This entry represents the two groups of Negroes who are connected with the Hoake family in The Hamlet: the "negro field hands" who work on the farm (149) and the "negro servants" who work inside the house, and with whom Alison Hoake McCarron leaves her nine-year-old boy when she goes to bring her husband's body home (150).

This man is a tenant farmer who works land owned by Jack Houston's father. In The Hamlet Jack Houston engages in a relationship with his daughter (228).

This man in The Hamlet advises another fireman who wants to borrow money from Flem Snopes, though he doesn't seem to understand how much the interest Flem has been charging him for "two years" is costing him (78). (He is the kind of 'fireman' who stokes a fire rather than puts one out.)

In The Hamlet this man works at Varner's cotton gin, and helps Trumbull overhaul the machinery (65). (He is the kind of 'fireman' who stokes a fire rather than puts one out.)