Big Hill onto the Square (Location Key)

Jefferson sits on top of what Faulkner's fictions often refer to as a plateau. Although in "Fool about a Horse" Pap and the unnamed narrator climb this "big hill" to reach the town while coming to Jefferson from Frenchman's Bend (i.e. the southeast), when Ratliff retells the story as part of Ab Snopes' biography in The Hamlet, he and Ab climb the "big hill" while approaching Jefferson from a different direction - the novel doesn't specify which. Faulkner hardly ever is troubled by this kind of discrepancy, but we had to pick a direction, so for several reasons we chose the east. This is the sort of 'metaphorical' big hill Faulkner's commentators regularly have to climb. It doesn't help to know that in the texts, the hill proves too much for the mules that Pap/Ab has just acquired from Pat Stamper.