Cemetery in Pine Hills (Location Key)

Mrs. Odlethrop's grave may be on her property, but more likely it is in one of Yoknapatawpha's local churchyard cemeteries - the text of "Monk" does not say. Odlethrop is the old woman who "lives like a hermit" and raises Monk in her log house somewhere in "the pine hill country in the eastern part" of the county ("Monk," 43). Six or seven years old when she dies, Monk has been alone with her decomposing body for a week when the neighbors discover it. When they bury her, he watches the funeral covertly from the undergrowth. When those neighbors return to the grave site a week later, they discover that Monk "had been digging into the grave, with sticks and with his bare hands": "He had a pretty big hole by then" (44). They fill it back up, but cannot capture Monk when he returns "that night," presumably to keep digging (44). After this the story moves on to the rest of Monk's life, which ends by execution in the state penitentiary.

Occupant: Mrs. Odlethrop.