A Fool’s Errand (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Albion Winegar Tourgée
- First Published: 1879
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Fiction of manners
- Time of Work: 1865-1877
- Setting: Warrington Place, Verdenton, in the southern United States
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism
- Subjects: Racism, South or Southerners, Nineteenth century, Lynching, Ku Klux Klan, Reconstruction, Philanthropy or philanthropists
- Locales: South (U.S.)
Characters Discussed
Colonel Comfort Servosse, the central character, who tries to help the South during the aftermath of the Civil War. Born in Michigan and schooled there as a lawyer, Servosse has little idea of the cultural opposition he will face as a Northerner trying to live in the same area of the South where he had served in the Union Army as it demilitarized the defeated Confederate Army. Colonel Servosse is identified repeatedly by the narrator as a fool because of his ambitions to change quickly an old culture. Convinced of the need for education for black people and...
[The entire page is 792 words long]
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