Parchman Penitentiary in The Mansion (Location)

Better known as Parchman Farm, the Mississippi state prison is a maximum-security facility that has been in operation since 1901. It is located in the Delta, the often-flooded part of the state that lies along the Mississippi River; when Mink looks out the window of the train carrying him to prison, he sees a "vast flat alluvial swamp of cypress and gum and brake and thicket . . . out of which man was still hewing savagely and violently the rich ragged fields in which cotton stalks grew ranker and taller than a man on a horse" (52). And the prison itself is described as a "single gate guarded day and night by men with shotguns, and inside it the low grim brick buildings with their barred windows" (54). Part of the punishment of the prisoners at Parchman, including Mink, is to work a state-owned cotton field.