Hoke Christian

In "Uncle Willy" Hoke Christian first opened the drugstore that his son Willy still owns before the Civil War. He seems to have been a much more exemplary member of the community than Willy, but it's hard to determine his class. In addition to his business, he owned at least one slave, Job, and slave-owning is a characteristic of Yoknapatawpha's upper class families. Talking about Willy, Mrs. Merridew refers to "that position in the world which his family's name entitled him to" (232). But Mrs. Merridew herself is by no means a member of Jefferson's elite, and the story regularly subverts her judgments. We think the "position" he occupies in the world Faulkner created is a middle class one. (See also Unnamed Grandfather of Uncle Willy, a character who appears in The Town and who has a lot in common with this character, though not enough to say Faulkner meant them to be the same character.)