Quarters at the Unnamed Family's Farm in "The Old People" (Location)

Display Label: 
Negro Quarters
Map Icon: 
Cabin
Authority : 
Context (text, as interpreted)
X: 
1362
Y: 
540
Description: 

This icon represents the unspecified number of cabins for black tenant farmers on the narrator's father's property. Until he moves out to the big woods, Sam Fathers lives "among Negroes" in one of them, "a cabin among the other cabins" (203). That phrase suggests the layout of a slave plantation, where the slaves lived in the 'quarters' somewhere behind the big house where the white people who owned the plantation, and them, lived. Although this story doesn't use the word 'quarters,' the two other texts that refer to Sam's cabin - the earlier "A Justice," where he lives on the Compson farm, and the slightly revised version of this story that Faulkner publishes in Go Down, Moses, both do. In the latter text, for example, Faulkner revises the phrase to read "a cabin among the other cabin in the quarters" (161). Although this story takes us inside what it calls "Sam's shop" - the plantation blacksmith shop where Sam works - it does not visit Sam's cabin (204).

Role: 
Only Mentioned in Text
Status: 
Continuous
Types: 
Quarters; Negro-occupied Cabin; Indian-occupied Cabin

digyok:node/location/6802