Uncle Buck McCaslin

In this novel Uncle Buck McCaslin's character remains the same as it had been in the four Unvanquished short stories he appears or is mentioned in, but in a new passage Faulkner gives him a twin brother and a family background that locates him in Yoknapatawpha's plantation aristocracy; this is the way the McCaslin family will be imagined in subsequent works, especially Go Down, Moses. The passage also gives Buck a twin brother, Buddy. In this text Faulkner's prose suggests that the formal names of "Buck and Buddy" are "Amodeus and Theophilus" (46); in later works Buck is Theophilus and Buddy is Amodeus. The two brothers introduce very unconventional ideas and arrangements to the plantation they inherit, but they compete with each other for the chance to fight in the Confederate Army; Buck loses the poker game that decides this, and so remains at home during the War. The first man to arrive at Granny's funeral, he insists on accompanying Bayard and Ringo on their quest for vengeance. He is "past seventy" (49), profane, testy from his rheumatism, but indefatigable on the outlaws' trail, giving up the quest only after being shot in his bad arm.