Mississippi River in Requiem for a Nun (Location)

The Mississippi River and the towns that grew up along its banks - "St Louis, Paducah, Memphis, Helena, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge" (82) - appears in the novel as a major element in the historical story that Yoknapatawpha is part of. The antebellum era as a "new age" for the nation flows through the "vast single net of commerce webbed and veined [by the waters of] the mid-continent's fluvial embracement" (83). Jefferson lies "about midway between" the River and the Natchez Trace (6).