Unnamed Governor of Mississippi

The Mississippi Governor in this story is almost surely modeled on Governor Theodore G. Bilbo, who served two terms in that office (1916-20 and 1928-32) and as a U.S. Senator from 1934 until his death in 1947. He, like the Governor in "Monk," is "a man without ancestry" (53), and is charged with trading in pardons for political gain. As a critic of the Governor's "puppet" Pardon Board, Gavin Stevens implies that the Governor is just another crooked politician more concerned with garnering votes than dispensing any actual justice; the Governor seems comfortable admitting that is the case. Gavin also calls him "shrewd," (53), and the Governor shows himself to be just that; moreover, he's practical and realistic about Terrel's pardon, providing a stark contrast to Stevens's idealism when he concludes that "politics in the twentieth century is a sorry thing" (57).