The Hamlet

In the tiny town of Frenchman’s Bend, power accrues to whoever is most willing to disregard ethical considerations in its pursuit. Though the Snopes family, particularly Flem, are the key examples of ruthlessness, the Varners are similarly powerful and employ similar methods. Will Varner is described as “a farmer, a usurer, a veterinarian; Judge Benbow of Jefferson once said of him that a milder-mannered man never bled a mule or stuffed a ballot box” (4). Though he has a less ruthless reputation than the one Flem develops, he uses the same methods to maintain power. The power struggle between the Varners and the Snopeses is not a conflict between different sets of values; both families value power and wealth above all else, and the only question is which family will be most successful in scamming and manipulating the other members of the community.

Flem Snopes is the key example of ruthless ambition in The Hamlet. Though he remains in the shadows, he is proved to be pulling the strings of economic power within Frenchman’s Bend. His willingness to scam or betray anyone to get ahead, even his own family, leads to widespread unhappiness and suffering in the town. Ratliff asserts, “There’s some things even a Snopes wont do. I dont know just exactly what they are, but they’s some somewhere” (265-66), but throughout The Hamlet Flem never hits upon these limits. He marries a woman he doesn’t care about, gives out usurious loans, and leaves his cousin to face criminal trial with no aid.

The ruthless behavior of the Snopeses often leads others to disregard their own moral guardrails and adopt similarly unscrupulous—if usually less effective—behaviors. For example, the farmer Henry Armstid is willing to bet his and his wife’s financial security to engage with Flem’s staged auction, proceeding to put his wife in physical danger over it. He then becomes obsessed with getting one over on Flem by buying the Old Frenchman’s Place from him and finding the treasure purportedly buried there. This leads to him ending the novel with Flem holding a mortgage over him as he desperately digs on the grounds of the Old Frenchman’s Place. Though other members of the town engage in their own attempts to be ruthless and self-serving, they rarely succeed as the Varners and Snopeses do. The power of these two families arises not only from their underhanded tactics but also from their ability to capture the mechanisms of institutional power. As Mrs. Tull declares to the judge, “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” (328). The competitive corruption of the Snopes and Varner families has not only corrupted the townspeople, it has corrupted the justice system, making their entrenched power even more difficult to dislodge.