Europe in Intruder in the Dust (Location)

"Europe" plays different roles in the novel's three references to it. When Gavin Stevens talks "for three hours" with the unnamed out-of-town architect about "Europe and Paris and Vienna," the continent is clearly a way for Americans of education and cultural sophistication to recognize each other (54). Later, when Gavin is talking to his nephew about race relations, the way he locates the U.S. - and perhaps specifically the segregated South - in relation to "Europe" is much less comfortable: what Gavin means by "the trouble with our relations with Europe right now" is ambiguous, but clearly this "Europe" not a tourist site (146). Gavin is still speaking on the subject of race when "Europe" is mentioned for the third time: he distinguishes Southerners as "a homogeneous people" from "the coastal spew of Europe" which inhabitants America's "coastal" cities (150).