LITCS 111
Teaching Associate: Patrick Mooney
Bldg. 494, room 160B
Spring 2016
(Chick Mallison on p. 23; ch. 1)All right,he says. And he reaches down and hauls out the money and pays the two hundred and eighteen dollars and fifty-two cents in cash and asks for a receipt.
Back then, no Jefferson, Mississippi boy ever had a whole dollar at one time very often, let alone four at the same time. So we had to trade with him.(Chick Mallison on p. 56; ch. 3)
Aleck Sander said No, that we were all white boys taking advantage of him because he was a Negro by asking him to let us do the same thing he did.(56)
You boys have got Flem Snopes wrong. He's got too much respect and reverence not jest for money but for sharpness too, to outrage and debase one of them by jest crude robbing and stealing the other one.(Gavin Stevens, quoting Ratliff on p. 147, ch. 8)
(Gavin quoting Ratliff, p. 150; ch. 8)I tell you, you got Flem all wrong, all of you have. I tell you, he aint just got respect for money: he's got active(he always said active for actual, though, in this case I believe his choice was better than Webster's)reverence for it. The last thing he would ever do is hurt that bank. Because any bank whether it's hisn or not stands for money, and the last thing he would ever do is to insult and degrade money by mishandling it.
Though it was not until two days later that the head auditor was ready to commit himself roughly as to how much money was missing. […] on the third day Ratliff said, though I didn't know what he meant then:(Chick Mallison on pp. 125-6; ch. 7)That's how much it was, was it? At least we know now jest how much Miz Flem Snopes is worth.
You're a trader. I'll make a trade with you.(Gavin Stevens on p. 233; ch. 15):
To be exactly what he needed to exactly fit exactly what he was going to be tomorrow after it was announced: a vice president's wife and child along with the rest of the vice president's furniture in the vice president's house? Is that what you tried to tell me?
Something like that,she said.
Just something like that,I said.Because that's not enough.(Gavin on p. 234; ch. 15)
Not catching his wife with Manfred de Spain yet is like that twenty-dollar gold piece pinned to your undershirt on your first maiden trip to what you hope is going to be a Memphis whorehouse. He dont need to unpin it yet.(Chick Mallison, repeating Ratliff's words, on p. 30; ch. 1)
So I can't think of but one Snopes object that he's got left.
All right,I said.I'll bite.
That-ere twenty-dollar gold piece.
What twenty-dollar gold piece?
Dont you remember what I said that day, about how when a country boy makes his first Sad-dy night trip to Memphis, that-ere twenty-dollar bill he wears pinned inside his undershirt so he can at least get back home?(pp. 159-60; ch. 8)
To be president of it himself,I said.No!I said.It cant be! It must not be!But he was just watching me.Nonsense!I said.
Why nonsense?he said.
Because, to use what you call that twenty-dollar gold piece, he's got to use his wife, too. Do you mean to tell me you believe for one moment that his wife will side with him against Manfred de Spain?(160; ch. 8)
We never did know whether she knew it or not too, even years after he was dead and she had all the money [...] the mother of two children, whose terrible power was that defenselessness and helplessness which conferred knighthood on any man who came within range.(Chick: 187–88; ch. 12)
Yes, the dont need minds at all, except for conversation, social intercourse. [...] unconfused by cold moralities and colder facts.(203; ch. 13)
You see? That was it: the very words reputation and good name. [...] innocence and virginity become symbol and postulant of loss and grief, evermore to be mourned, existing only in the past tense was and now is not, no more no more.(212–13; ch. 15)
I was the simple one, to whom it had never once occurred that the blow of that ruby-vacant reasonably almost-gold tiger's head might have marked her too [...] and opened the screen door and entered the office.(213–14; ch. 15)
(231–33; ch. 15)You came to fight then,she said, pouring. [...]My husband chose this furniture.[...]It had to be exactly what it was, for exactly what he was.[...]You're a trader. I'll make a trade with you.[...]I dont want coffee,I said, sitting there saying Flem Snopes Flem Snopes until I said, cried:I dont want anything! I'm afraid!until I finally saidWhat?
So even Uncle Gaving, that Ratliff said made a kind of religion of never letting Jefferson see that a Snopes had suprised him, didn't expect Mr Flem that afternoon [...] he and Mr Snopes were looking at exactly the same thing: it just wasn't with the same eye.(Chick: 175, ch. 10)
(Chick: 179, ch. 10)Am I too late, or jest too soon?he [Ratliff] said. [...]First the soap, then the threat, then the bribe.[...] Then he changed his mind.
(Chick: 185, ch. 10)Much obliged. I'll give it back to the sheriff.[...]We got to live here. Morning, gentlemen.