Unnamed Narrator

Although the boy who narrates Uncle Willy's story says very little about himself, he is a recognizable version of other juvenile narrators in Faulkner's fiction, and a way for Faulkner to provide a perspective on both the story's unconventional protagonist and the conventional small-town world of Jefferson. He likes playing baseball with his friends and eating the ice cream that Job makes at Willy's drugstore, is uncomfortable in school, and is willing "to do anything [Willy] asked me to do" (239). His way of helping runs the gamut from buying "Jamaica ginger" to quiet Willy's craving for alcohol (234) to making sure that Willy can get his plane into the air on his suicidal flight from the adults, including the narrator's father, who want to save the old man from himself. He is fourteen years old when the story begins (227), and apparently still fourteen when it ends over two years later (245). He is "some years" older when he tells the story, since now, for example, he can identify the source of the smell that comes back with Willy from his visits to the brothels of Memphis (236), but it is not clear how much time has passed. His view of Willy is unchanged. He still thinks of the old man as "the finest man I ever knew" (225, 239) and believes Willy can teach him how to conquer mortality by "having fun too when I had to get old" (239).