Europe (Location Key)

Faulkner mentions locations in Europe in many texts, sets scenes in various parts of the continent in others, and in two 'Yoknapatawpha fictions' - "Ad Astra" and "All the Dead Pilots" - sets a whole story there. But usually he identifies a more or less specific part of the continent: France, say, or Paris, or the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. This entry represents the times he refers simply to "Europe." For example, the "fanlight" above the front door of Sutpen's mansion in Absalom! was "imported pane by pane from Europe" (150). In "Delta Autumn" and again in Go Down, Moses, as the hunters drive to the Delta and one of the few surviving patches of American wilderness in Mississippi on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II, they discuss the way the "old-world" is being engulfed by war (275, 337). Hitler is mentioned (269, 322) and Ike McCaslin reflects on the way the cotton grown on the Delta will be used by Europeans "to shoot at one another" (275, 337). Another instance occurs in "Smoke," where the "small, curiously chased brass box" that allows Gavin Stevens to solve the murder is a gift that Miss Emma Dukinfield brought her father "from Europe" (25). Both Europe as a tourist destination and the more fraught world after World War II shape the three times "Europe" is mentioned in Intruder in the Dust. But perhaps the most interesting evocation of "Europe" occurs in Sanctuary, where twice Horace tells himself that "when this is over, I'll go to Europe" (134, see also 260). In fact the novel makes it clear that in the end he goes back to Belle, but the idea that 'Europe' might be a place of sanctuary is an interesting twist on the way so many other inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha see Texas. See "Texas" in this index.