Major de Spain

Major de Spain is a wealthy landowner in Jefferson and the owner of a fishing and hunting camp near the Tallahatchie River in northern Yoknapatawpha County. Perhaps because he owns the camp, or perhaps because of his higher class status, De Spain is considered the leader of the group who gather for roughly two weeks in the fall of each year to hunt bear, deer, and other game. Like several other characters in this story, "Major de Spain" appears in a number of Faulkner novels and short stories, as a name for two different characters, a father and a son. From the date of the events in "A Bear Hunt," this De Spain must be the son, Manfred de Spain - who inherited the title of "Major" from his father, who in fact served in the Civil War with that rank. But Manfred is usually depicted as a bachelor (though he is given a son in "Shall Not Perish"), and this story's first narrator notes that he has a wife and married daughters. The narrative itself reveals him to be impatient and domineering, which is certainly characteristic of Manfred elsewhere. (In Faulkner's revised version of the story in Big Woods, this character is explicitly identified as the son of "old Major de Spain.")