Oxford: Government Reservoir in "Two Soldiers" (Location)

When his older brother Pete tells the narrator that Pearl Harbor is "across the water," the boy uses "that Government reservoy up at Oxford" as his reference point for a body of water (81). Sardis Lake, as it is called, was built as a reservoir and flood control project during the Depression, one of the Roosevelt Administration’s public works. Opened in 1940, it flooded 14 miles of the Little Tallahatchie, the river that Faulkner used to mark the northern boundary of Yoknapatawpha.