Submitted by cornellgoldw@fo... on Sat, 2013-12-21 10:01
Oklahoma, one of Joe Christmas's stopovers during his "fifteen years" of travels, is probably where at least some of the "oil towns" he worked in were located (224).
Submitted by cornellgoldw@fo... on Sat, 2013-12-21 09:59
In Sanctuary the Drake family pretends that Temple is staying with her aunt in Michigan to cover up the fact that she has disappeared. The first character actually to spend time in Michigan is Joe Christmas, in Light in August. Joe travels through a good bit of the U.S. during his experiences on "the street which was to run for fifteen years" (223).
Submitted by cornellgoldw@fo... on Sat, 2013-12-21 09:58
Chicago, Illinois, is mentioned in 8 texts, and used in this project as a Location in 9. That needs explaining. Our practice is to include a Location for the place from which every first-person narrator tells a story. The narrator of "Ad Astra" only gives ambiguous clues about where he lives. He identifies himself as an "American" in the opening sentences (407). Based on what he says about Bland - "He was a Southerner, too, like Sartoris" (408) - he's not from the South.
Submitted by cornellgoldw@fo... on Sat, 2013-12-21 09:53
Mexico is mentioned in 7 texts, but the only characters who spend any time there are Nathaniel Burden and Joe Christmas in Light in August - Burden in the antebellum period; Joe in the early 20th century - and Caddy Compson in the "Appendix," when she goes to Mexico in 1925 to get a divorce from her second husband. In The Town the "Jicarilla Apache squaw" with whom Byron Snopes has four children is from Mexico (379). In the context of Faulkner's world, their relationship is transgressive, and from any point of view their children are uncontrollable.
Submitted by cornellgoldw@fo... on Sat, 2013-12-21 09:51
Missouri was admitted to the U.S. as a slave state in 1831, but during the Civil War did not secede from the Union to join the Confederacy. Perhaps that explains the apparent contradiction in The Unvanquished. In the chapter "Skirmish at Sartoris" Bayard refers to "the two Burdens from Missouri" who are in Jefferson to help the newly emancipated slaves vote in a local election (199).
Submitted by cornellgoldw@fo... on Sat, 2013-12-21 09:50
The Oklahoma territory to the west of the Mississippi River was the land to which many tribes - including the Chickasaws and Choctaws who once lived in Yoknapatawpha - were sent by the American government during the 'Indian removals' of the first half of the 19th century. Chick Mallison's chronology is faulty when he says in The Town that "the last Chickasaw departed for Oklahoma in 1820" (11), but they were all gone before 1840.
