The Hamlet

“Even his name was forgotten, his pride but a legend about the land he had wrested from the jungle and tamed as a monument to that appellation which those who came after him in battered wagons and on muleback and even on foot, with flintlock rifles and dogs and children and home-made whiskey stills and Protestant psalm-books, could not even read, let alone pronounce, and which now had nothing to do with any once-living man at all—his dream and his pride now dust with the lost dust of his anonymous bones, his legend but the stubborn tale of the money he buried somewhere about the place when Grant overran the country on his way to Vicksburg.”

The Old Frenchman whose presence gave name and legend to the town of Frenchman’s Bend, just like the old South, has been lost to time. None of his habits or desires or successes survive, only the idea of a fortune that can still be found, symbolizing the poor white farmers’ dream of a return to the old South.

“The son, Jody, was about thirty, a prime bulging man, slightly thyroidic, who was not only unmarried but who emanated a quality of invincible and inviolable bachelordom as some people are said to breathe out the odor of sanctity or spirituality.”

Jody’s key traits are defined in this introduction, his presence almost a caricature of the proud masculine figure. As the events of the novel progress, this image of Jody as a proud and singular man is subverted by his continual failure to exert control or come out on top.

“I dont know as I would go on record as saying he set ere a one of them afire. I would put it that they both taken fire while he was more or less associated with them. You might say that fire seems to follow him around, like dogs follows some folks.”

Though Ab Snopes still has typically “Snopesian” traits, he is made more complicated by the difficulties he has faced. This quote is both humorous in its reference to the Snopeses’ ability to avoid facing legal repercussions, and insightful in its understanding of Ab’s approach.