Cuba (Location Key)

Four of the 5 references to Cuba in the fictions mention it in the context of the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century. This was the first foreign war the U.S. fought after the Civil War, and at the time was talked about as the proof that former enemies from 'the North' and 'the South' could fight side by side under the same American flag. "My Grandmother Millard," for example, looks ahead "thirty years" from its Civil War setting to note that the Confederate general Wheeler "commanded in Cuba" (673), and Requiem for a Nun mentions that the sons of surviving Confederate soldiers - "those tottering old men in gray" - had fought and died "in blue coats in Cuba" (189). Both The Town and The Mansion mention the action that Manfred de Spain saw in Cuba, though there is some ambiguity about exactly what kind of action it was that left him "with a long jagged scar" (11, 142). The only other reference to Cuba occurs in The Sound and the Fury, when Herbert Head tries to placate Quentin Compson by offering him a cigar that he bought with the help of a friend "in Havana" (108).