A very drunk Gowan spends the night in the Oxford train station, apparently in the bathroom. Horace gets off and on board trains there, but also uses the bathroom. While in there, both men see Temple Drake's name "scrawled on the foul, stained wall" (34, 172).
The U.S. "postoffice" (Faulkner's spelling) that Horace visits looking for information about Temple is a branch office on the grounds of the University of Mississippi (171). In the world outside the fictions, for a time during the 1920s Faulkner himself worked in this branch, which was located inside a part of the University Store Building. He may have been tempted to write himself into the novel, but the postal "clerk" with whom Horace speaks bears no obvious resemblance to Faulkner (171).
The "bridge across the railroad cutting" serves to connect the town of Oxford to the campus of the University of Mississippi (30). Historically, this setting is the 'Hilgard Cut,' the bridge and track that were designed by an engineer named Eugene Hilgard just before the Civil War to allow trains to run through Jefferson more smoothly and students to cross into town more easily.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Tue, 2014-01-21 11:37
"Death Drag" doesn't name any of the various towns in which the barnstormers put on their "DEATH DEFYING SHOW" (190). This Location represents the site where Ginsfarb jumped from the plane prematurely, crashing into the car and almost crashing the whole act. His action required Jock to fly "full throttle for thirty minutes" to save Ginsfarb's life (197), and caused Jock's hair to turn white. The place we assign it on our map of the story is conjectural.
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Tue, 2014-01-21 11:26
"Death Drag" doesn't name any of the various towns in which the barnstormers put on their "DEATH DEFYING SHOW" (190). This location represents the site where Ginsfarb jumped from the plane prematurely, crashing into the car and almost crashing the whole act. His action required Jock to fly "full throttle for thirty minutes" to save Ginsfarb's life (197), and caused Jock's hair to turn white. The place we assign it on our map of the story assumes the barnstormers stay largely in the region around Yoknapatawpha, but that's an assumption.
Described in Faulkner's fiction as one of the first white settlers in Yoknapatawpha, the man other people in Yoknapatawpha called the "Frenchman" created a large-scale cotton plantation in the southern part of Yoknapatawpha sometime around 1830-1840, confirming Horace's date when he refers to "that old Frenchman that built the house a hundred years ago" (110). But "Hand Upon the Waters" (1939) Faulkner gives him a name (Louis Grenier) and a specific history as a "Frenchman," although in other texts Faulkner writes that this foreigner may not have actually have been from France.
In the novel's narrative these women are displaced twice: Horace is at the Sartoris place when he tells the story of Lee Goodwin at the Old Frenchman place telling him about the "Mexican girls" he met while serving as a sergeant in the U.S. cavalry (109).
The "man named Mitchell" (106) is given the first name Harry in Flags in the Dust, where he is portrayed as both a conventionally jovial Jefferson businessman and Belle's harried husband.
The narrative simply refers to the people eating dinner when Ruby comes in to use the phone as "Tull's family" (105). The story "Spotted Horses" (which was published a few months after Sanctuary) is a bit more forthcoming, listing "his wife and three daughters and Mrs. Tull's aunt." On that basis we identify the gender of the family as "female."
Tull is a Frenchman's Bend farmer who reappears often in Faulkner's fiction. In this novel his place is two miles away from the Old Frenchman place. Gowan goes there to hire a car. After Tommy is killed, Ruby also goes there and phones the Sheriff "with Tull's family sitting about the table, about the Sunday dinner" (105).
