Memphis: Memphis Streets (Location Key)

The narrator of "Two Soldiers" - a farm boy from Frenchman's Bend - comments on the streets of Memphis each time he is exposed to them. Walking along them on his way to the recruiting station he is intimidated by "all them rushing cars and shoving folks and all that racket" (93). Driving with Mrs. McKellogg to her apartment puts him, as he puts it, "right down in the middle of all them other cars" (97). Leaving the city in another car to return to his farm in Yoknapatawpha, he is amazed at how "Memphis runs on for miles . . . before it begun to give out" (99). According to the census, Memphis was the 32nd largest city in the U.S. in 1940, with almost 300,000 inhabitants.