Spain (Location Key)

As the "Appendix" to The Sound and the Fury briefly notes, Spain was part of the history of the "Mississippi Valley" (327): until 1803, it claimed much of the immense area drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries, which became known as the Louisiana Purchase after Spain ceded it to France and France sold it to the young U.S. In The Mansion Linda Snopes and Barton Kohl go to Spain after their wedding to fight in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The other nations involved in that conflict were Germany, Italy and Soviet Russia: the Fascist governments of the first two supported General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces - using the occasion to try out many of the tactics and weapons they would soon deploy in the Second World War; the Communists supported the Republicans, which the F.B.I. agent who shows up in Jefferson to investigate Linda calls "the Loyalist Communist army" (260). Linda and Barton are among the many foreign volunteers - including many writers like Andre Malraux - who fight for the Republic. Malraux and Ernest Hemingway, who sympathized with the Republican side but was in Spain as a war correspondent, are both mentioned in Faulkner's novel.