The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The place where Bayard and Ringo finally catch up with Grumby is not described in much detail. It is on the old road through the river bottom, and surrounded by "bushes" (178).

The recently vacated spot where Grumby and his men had made camp; details like "a fire still burning and a hog they had not even had time to butcher" indicate that Ringo and Bayard are very close behind them (176).

Where Granny is buried. After Bayard and Ringo return to fix Grumby's hand to Granny's grave, the landscape has changed, personifying Granny: "The earth had sunk too, now, after two months; it was almost level now, like at first Granny had not wanted to be dead either, but now had begun to be reconciled" (184).

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). As Light in August confirms, the Burdens did live in Missouri before coming to Yoknapatawpha, but in the chapter "An Odor of Verbena" Drusilla calls the Burdens "northerners" (223). In Light in August the older Burden was born in New England, but it's not clear that Drusilla could have known that.

John Sartoris kills the two Burdens to prevent them from organizing Negroes to vote three different times in Faulkner's fiction. The event always takes place in the center of Jefferson, but not always in a hotel, and only once in a hotel owned by a woman named "Mrs. Holston" (207) in The Unvanquished; in Flags in the Dust she is named "Mrs. Winterbottom"). Elsewhere in the Yoknapatawpha fictions Faulkner says that the "Holston house" was the first tavern ever built in Jefferson; in Absalom, Absalom! Thomas Sutpen stays there when he first arrives in town.

Cotton gins play a crucial role in the economy of Yoknapatawpha. A "gin" is machine that separates the valuable fibers of the cotton plant from its seeds; since it was only used once each year, when the cotton was picked, it was typically housed in a simple structure. In this story, the "cotton gin on the edge of town" is where the freedmen gathered, "under guard," ahead of the election (204).

The spring is located "down the hill" from Joby's cabin on the Sartoris plantation (148).

Oxford is a real town in north-central Mississippi, about 75 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. It is the seat of Lafayette County, and the home of the University of Mississippi. William Faulkner lived there for most of his life (including the years during which he wrote The Unvanquished). Just as Lafayette provided Faulkner with much of Yoknapatawpha, Oxford served as the basis for his fictional Jefferson. Here the two towns, real and fictional, are located "forty miles" apart (213).

A real town in Mississippi and one of the locations where, according to Ringo, Miss Rosa and he have stolen mules. Madison was named for James Madison, the fourth President of the U.S. Located on a railroad line and only ten miles from the state capital of Jackson, Madison was heavily damaged in during the Civil War.

A real small town in Mississippi, and a location where, according to Ringo, Miss Rosa and he have stolen mules.