The Hamlet

“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.

“‘Sho now,’ Ratliff said. ‘Old man Ab aint naturally mean. He’s just soured.’”

Not only does this quote introduce context for Ab’s actions, but it also shows Ratliff’s talent for insight and compassion. Ratliff knows more about Ab than anyone else in Frenchman’s Bend, both good and bad. His insistence on tracing Ab’s actions back to their source reveals Ratliff’s commitment to understanding those around him, instead of falling back on predetermined judgements.

“Ratliff watched soberly. Just like always, he thought. He still handles a horse or a mule like it had done already threatened him with its fist before he even spoke to it.”

Ratliff’s gift for understanding is shown here even further, this time tempered by his realism. He knows that Ab’s anti-social behaviors come from his own painful experiences, but he also recognizes that those behaviors do harm to others.

“I want to make one pure and simple demand of you and I want a pure and simple Yes and No for a answer: How many more is there? How much longer is this going on? Just what is it going to cost me to protect one goddamn barn full of hay?”

Jody is now realizing the scope of the mess he has gotten himself into and is attempting to reckon with the consequences. Slowly but surely, Flem is replacing him, and Jody is coming to understand the consequences of the bad deals he has made.

“He’d let you rot and die right here and glad of it, and you know it! Your own kin you’re so proud of because he works in a store and wears a necktie all day! Ask him to give you a sack of flour even and see what you get. Ask him! Maybe he’ll give you one of his old neckties someday so you can dress like a Snopes too!”

This quote shows the level of Flem’s self-interest, how even his family has no faith in his coming to their aid or doing anything that doesn’t benefit himself. That it comes from Mink Snopes’s wife, this quote is also foreshadowing Mink’s abandonment by Flem.

“Because I believe I done it right. I had to trade not only on what I think he knows about me, but on what he must figure I know about him, as conditioned and restricted by that year of sickness and abstinence from the science and pastime of skullduggery.”

In making a deal for the sheep, Ratliff has proven himself a worthy opponent for Flem. His success shows how Ratliff uses his observations to protect himself and prevent scams.

“It was Snopes who did what Varner had never even permitted his son to do—sat alone at the desk with the cash from the sold crops and the account-books before him and cast up the accounts and charged them off and apportioned to each tenant his share of the remaining money.”

This quote shows the extent to which Flem has supplanted Jody, “passing” him to take over jobs Jody had never even been trusted with. Flem now visibly controls all the money in town, even if it is technically still under the purview of Will Varner.

“On the contrary, her entire appearance suggested some symbology out of the old Dionysic times—honey in sunlight and bursting grapes, the writhen bleeding of the crushed fecundated vine beneath the hard rapacious trampling goat-hoof.”

The description of Eula shows both the abundance within her, connecting her to the ideas of harvest and ecstasy, and the waste of her potential. The narrator compares Eula’s life in Frenchman’s Bend to fruit rotting on the vine.

“I am afraid of what I might do, not because of her because there is nothing I or any man could do to her that would hurt her. It’s because of what it will do to me.”

Labove, obsessed and predatory toward Eula, is showing his own insecurity, which is mirrored in the other men who pursue her. It is revealed later that instead of being unfeeling to the violence men want to perpetrate against her, Eula is instead utterly apathetic and drained.

“Through that spring and through the long succeeding summer of her fourteenth year, the youths of fifteen and sixteen and seventeen who had been in school with her and others who had not, swarmed like wasps about the ripe peach which her full damp mouth resembled.”

The connection of Eula to the imagery of nourishment and harvest continues, her physical body parts now taking specific resemblance to fruit. The men obsessed with her are also shown to be aspects of this natural world comparison, but as pests like wasps.

“He looked at the face again. It had not been tragic, and now it was not even damned, since from behind it there looked out only another mortal natural enemy of the masculine race. And beautiful: but then, so did the highwayman’s daggers and pistols make a pretty shine on him; and now as he watched, the lost calm face vanished.”

Eula, by accident of nature, has been cast in a role in opposition to men. Ratliff, always observant, recognizes the danger in it: Eula’s beauty is real, but so is the strife that springs up around it.

“What he felt was outrage at the waste, the useless squandering; at a situation intrinsically and inherently wrong by any economy, like building a log dead-fall and baiting it with a freshened heifer to catch a rat; or no, worse: as though the gods themselves had funnelled all the concentrated bright wet-slanted unparadised June onto a dung-heap, breeding pismires.”

Ratliff recognizes Eula’s potential and that of Frenchman’s Bend, and thereby can’t help but see how the actions of the Snopeses and the Varners lead to this potential being wasted. His observation of the people means he is the best suited to understanding the full scope of what has been done to the community.

“He would cure the idiot forever more of coveting cows by the immemorial and unfailing method: he would make him feed and milk her, he would return home and ride back tomorrow morning and make him feed and milk again and then lead the cow back on foot to where he had found her.”

Houston’s anger over Ike’s obsession with his cow continues the connection between cows and women. He treats Ike’s stealing of the cow like an elopement, and his plan to force Ike to care for the cow afterward resembles a marriage.

“Maybe all I want is just to have been righteouser, so I can tell myself I done the right thing and my conscience is clear now and at least I can go to sleep tonight.”

Ratliff struggles more and more with his moral conscience as the Snopeses become more numerous in town and their schemes get more outrageous. He desires to distinguish himself from them, to avoid falling into the trap of Snopesism.

“Geography: that paucity of invention, that fatuous faith in distance of man, who can invent no better means than geography for escaping; himself of all, to whom, so he believed he believed, geography had never been merely something to walk upon but was the very medium which the fetterless to- and fro-going required to breathe in.”

Houston’s attempt to travel to escape the love and devotion he feels toward his eventual wife allows for a look at the idea of travel. This quote is interesting, as even though Houston (and others) wander, they almost always find themselves back in Yoknapatawpha County.

“But at once he knew he was not going to sleep, not because of the seventy-two hours’ habit of reversed days and nights, not because of any twitching and jerking of spent and ungovernable nerves and muscles, but because of that silence which the first gunshot had broken and the second one had made whole again.”

Mink’s disorientation post-murder shows a change, the effect that an act like killing another man can have, even on someone like Mink. His Snopes instincts compelled him to shoot Houston, just like Ab’s barn burnings, to reassert himself after a lost court case, but the action and the effect are two separate entities.

“He had been bred by generations to believe invincibly that to every man, whatever his past actions, whatever depths he might have reached, there was reserved one virgin, at least for him to marry; one maidenhead, if only for him to deflower and destroy.”

This reflects the attitude that many of the men in The Hamlet share. Mink’s discomfort with his wife’s sexual activity is mirrored in the fears that other men have toward Eula’s sexuality.

“The beautiful face did not even turn as the surrey drew abreast of the store. It passed in profile, calm, oblivious, incurious. It was not a tragic face: it was just damned. The surrey went on.”

Eula remains apathetic, as her circumstances have given her no reason to feel otherwise. Married to Flem, she is forever stuck in the state of wasted potential and wasted life.

“There’s some things even a Snopes wont do. I dont know just exactly what they are, but they’s some somewhere.”

Ratliff’s observation of the Snopeses means that he knows both the extent they are willing to go to and that they are still only human. His assertion here shows his desire to maintain his balanced and nuanced view, even as the Snopeses’ actions in Frenchman’s Bend grow bolder and more harmful.

“A fellow can dodge a Snopes if he just starts lively enough. In fact, I dont believe he would have to pass more than two folks before he would have another victim intervened betwixt them.”

Ratliff knows how the Snopeses work, and this quote shows how he has made himself a difficult target up to this point. Ratliff’s continual movement has protected him, as the Snopes will typically go for the easiest or most personal target first.

“You’ll let Eck Snopes or Flem Snopes or that whole Varner tribe snatch you out of the wagon and beat you half to death against a wooden bridge. But when it comes to suing them for your just rights and a punishment, oh no. Because that wouldn’t be neighborly.”

Mrs. Tull’s outburst in the court allows the town a voice to make clear their frustration. Ab Snopes’s escape from justice for the barn burning, a startling thing at the start of the novel, is now just the status quo.

“‘I don’t know,’ Ratliff said in that same pleasant and unchanged and impenetrable voice out of his spent and sleepless face, still looking at Snopes. ‘I used to think I was smart, but now I don’t know.’”

Though Ratliff is trying to fool Flem here, this quote is foreshadowing how the deal will end badly for Ratliff. He has finally allowed himself to end up in a situation where he can be fooled by Flem, and Flem is going to take full advantage.