Narrator

The unnamed vernacular narrator who tells the story is one of Faulkner's favorite characters, identified in other early Faulkner texts as V.K. Suratt - a name Faulkner later changed to V.K. Ratliff.  His voice identifies him as a country man, but the narrator identifies himself as an itinerant salesman, in Frenchman's Bend in order to "sell a machine" - a sewing machine - to a Mrs. Burden who lives nearby (174).  He is returning to Jefferson as the story begins, colloquially, as if he is speaking to a live audience with whom he feels very comfortable: "Yes, sir. Flem Snopes has filled that whole country full of spotted horses" (165).  Faulkner frequently uses him, his vernacular voice, and his shrewd perspective on human beings, to narrate his fictions.