Tree Stand in Big Woods (Location Key)

A deer-hunting 'stand' can be a structure, a platform attached to a tree that allows the hunter to wait eight or ten feet above the ground for his prey to walk past - or the term 'stand' can simply mean a specific place on the ground, usually with his back against a tree, where the hunter waits. In the Yoknapatawpha fictions it usually is the second kind of 'stand' that is meant. In either case, it's a safety precaution: when a group is hunting together, as is also the usual practice in Faulkner's fictions, by staying at their 'stands' the hunters know where the other hunters are. There are many different 'stands' in the hunting stories. This is the one where Sam Fathers stands with the young hunter in "Lion," "The Old People" and Go Down, Moses. In the first text the hunter's name is Quentin [Compson], in the second he does not have a name, and in the third he's Ike McCaslin. In each case it is a kind of turning point in the boy's life.