Cambridge Inset: Picnic Site (Location Key)

In Quentin's section of The Sound and the Fury Mrs. Bland takes her son Gerald, two young women, Spoade, Shreve and finally (after he is released by the magistrate) Quentin somewhere for an outdoor "party" (168). The location is not specified, and the fact that Quentin's mind is 'in' Mississippi and his past for almost the entire scene does not make it any easier to tell where they are in Massachusetts. The spot, however, doesn't seem far from the Italian neighborhood in the suburbs of Boston where Quentin joined them. There is a house nearby, and when Quentin leaves to catch a trolley back to Harvard, he walks "across the yard," "around the house," "down a rock path" and "through a gate, onto the road" (168). The train he takes runs past the river. But the place we put this spot on the map is purely speculative.