In The Sound and the Fury on both Saturday and Sunday (the first and fourth sections of the novel) various groups of golfers are described playing on the course beside the Compson place. Consistent with the severe conceptual limitations of Benjy's mind, his descriptions of them are very confusing: "they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit" (3). When the third person narrator describes the same actions in the fourth section, it becomes easy to see who is there and what they are doing: Benjy and Luster "watched the foursome . . . move to the tee and drive" (315).
Herbert Head mentions "a little widow over in town" when he is trying to ingratiate himself with Quentin (110). The "town" is presumably Boston, "over" the river from Harvard. Although it has been suggested that Head is talking about a prostitute, the idea of 'the college widow' as an unmarried woman who dates a succession of students over the years was proverbial in both 1910 (when the conversation takes place) and 1929 (when the novel was published).
Herbert Head mentions "a little widow over in town" when he is trying to ingratiate himself with Caddy's brother Quentin (110). The "town" is presumably Boston, "over" the river from Harvard. Although it has been suggested that Head is talking about a prostitute, the idea of 'the college widow' as an unmarried woman who dates a succession of students over the years was proverbial in both 1910 (when the conversation takes place) and 1929 (when The Sound and the Fury was published).
Both Chick and Gavin at different points in the novel imagine a group they identify as "outlanders" (149, 199). In the second instance Gavin describes them to Chick as the people of "the North and East and West" who are currently seeking to "force on us [the South] laws based on the idea that man's injustice to man can be abolished overnight" (199).
In Intruder in the Dust both Chick Mallison and Gavin Stevens at different points imagine a group they identify as "outlanders" (149, 199). In the second instance Gavin describes them to Chick as the people of "the North and East and West" who are currently seeking to "force on us [the South] laws based on the idea that man's injustice to man can be abolished overnight" (199).
In The Reivers Sam Caldwell's uncle is a "division superintendent" on the railroad line Same works for (130). A typical division superintendent is in charge of a fairly large section of a railroad company's track.
These two "ladies," "neighbors, still in their boudoir caps," are part of the group in The Reivers that gathers in front of the shed to see Boon drive Grandfather's car (35). Presumably they are also among the people who go for rides in it later.
These are the men Lucius in The Reivers calls "drummers," a term Faulkner expected his readers to know meant traveling salesmen (8). Taking them back and forth between the railroad station and the hotel is a steady source of business for Maury Priest's livery stable.
In The Reivers Lucius notes that "two other men" are standing with Sam and "the conductor" of the train that is taking them to Parsham (161). One of them, he says, "must have been the engineer" (161). This is the other one. As part of "a functioning train crew," he could be a fireman or a brakeman (161).
This is the group of men that Lucius refers to in The Reivers, ironically, as "our Jefferson leisure class": the "friends or acquaintances of Father's or maybe just friends of horses" who congregate in the livery stable to pass the time (38). They expect neither "any business" nor "any mail" to come their way (38). In other Yoknapatawpha novels such men typically sit in the barbershop or the park around the courthouse.
