Ernest Cotton

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Ernest Cotton
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Cotton, Ernest
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Ernest Cotton is a bachelor and an unsuccessful farmer whose hapless attempt to avenge himself against a more prosperous neighbor is at the center of "The Hound." The narrator describes him as "a mild man in worn overalls, with a gaunt face and lack-luster eyes like a sick man" (157). He is also a murderer and would-be suicide, though unsuccessful at those as well. (When Faulkner revised this story for inclusion in The Hamlet, he made Cotton's character a cousin of Flem named Mink Snopes.)

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