Unnamed Descendants of Modern Planter

In its account of modern changes in Yoknapatawpha, Requiem for a Nun focuses on the generational experience of the "son" of the large plantation, who goes to World War II from "the seat of the tractor" with which he, rather than his father's tenants, works the land; upon his return he leaves behind "the long monotonous endless unendable furrows of Mississippi cotton fields" to live with his wife and growing family "in automobile trailers of G.I. barracks on the outskirts of liberal arts colleges" (193). (In the decade after World War II almost 8 million veterans went to college using the education benefits provided by the G.I. Bill of 1944.)