ledger

A ledger is a type of book used for bookkeeping in business. The ledger keeps a record of additions and subtractions to an account over time.

As a symbol, the ledger is featured most prominently in "The Bear": "...the new page and the new ledger, the hand which he could now recognise as his father's...and beneath this and covering the next five pages and almost that many years, the slow, day-by-day accrument of the wages allowed him and the food and clothing...charged against the slowly yet steadily mounting sum of balance..." (254-255)

Additionally, Shreve refers to a ledger in a mocking tone in //Absalom, Absalom!//: "So it takes two niggers to get rid of one Sutpen, don't it?...Which is all right, it's fine; it clears the whole ledger, you can tear all the pages out and burn them..." (302)

Recently, among documents donated to the University of North Carolina in 1946, scholars have [|uncovered a connection] between Faulkner's writing and the detailed notes kept by a Mississippi plantation owner, Francis Terry Leak. Many character names and details are thought to have been inspired by Faulkner's careful research of these documents, and they represent a significant discovery in Faulkner studies.

–Bill Keane