Memphis in "Lion" (Location)

Founded in 1819, Memphis, Tennessee, was the closest big city to Yoknapatawpha County. It plays a role in many of Faulkner's novels and stories, especially as the place where people from Jefferson went to misbehave: to buy liquor, for example, as Boon and Quentin do in this story. In the story it appears as "the tall buildings and the hard pavements and the street cars" that make Quentin feel conspicuous in his hunting clothes (188), and the railroad station with its restaurant in which Boon appears as a kind of wild animal. The Memphis "zoo" that Boon wants to take his Lion to was created in 1906, with a black bear as its first inhabitant.