Joe Christmas' Fifteen-Year Street in Light in August (Location)

At the end of his affair with Bobbie Allen, Joe Christmas leaves his home and "entered the street which was to run for fifteen years" (223). In the course of his travels, "the thousand streets ran as one street" (223), which we have chosen to situate in the center of the United States as a kind of representative rather than exact Location for what happens to Joe during those years of his life. The street is metaphorical, the narrative's way of summing up all of the traveling Joe does between the time he strikes McEachern and the time he arrives in Yoknapatawpha, and it must be measured in years as well as thousands of miles. It takes Joe across much of the United States and into Mexico as well; the places the novel mentions by name are on our map. Constant on the street are jails, brothels, working class neighborhoods, fields, farms: "he was in turn laborer, miner,prospector, gambling tout; he enlisted in the army, served four months and deserted and was never caught" (224).