Ever since the publication of the novel Sartoria, members of a strange new breed of people by the name of Snopes have appeared in every Faulkner novel and short story which constitutes a part of what is called the Yoknapatawpha chronicle. Heretofore, it has been popular to support the thesis that the Snopeses represented the embodiment of crass commercialism, the inevitable replacement for the dying cotton aristocracy, and the direct retribution for the sins that had caused the downfall of these degenerate Southern gentry. This thesis will attempt to show, not that such a contention is wholly wrong, but that the real meaning of Snopesism lies much deeper than this, far beyond such a simple interpretation.