Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Fri, 2014-06-27 08:42
Several characters in Faulkner's fiction enlist in the military by way of the "army recruiting station in Memphis" (The Mansion, 283). One who tries to but doesn't - he gets to the recruiting office and even tries to fight his way in - is Pete Grier's almost 9-year-old younger brother in "Two Soldiers." He's the 'soldier' who narrates the story.
Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Fri, 2014-06-27 08:41
There are at least two different Memphis bus stations in these three texts. In "Uncle Willy" the one used by the narrator is located "at the edge of town" (240). The narrator of "Two Soldiers" arrives in the city at the main bus station; as he puts it, the "bus dee-po" in Memphis is "a heap bigger than the one in Jefferson" (93). Mink Snopes is given a ride into Memphis in a truck in The Mansion, but gets let off at "the bus station"; the man who gives him a ride says that "buses leave here for everywhere" (314). Mink wonders if he can spend the night there, but never does.
Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Thu, 2014-06-26 16:26
On the road to Memphis the narrator notes"all the towns" he sees along the way, and the places that punctuate the landscape like "a patch of stores," "water tanks and smokestacks," "gins and sawmills" (92). The boy leaves Memphis later in the day by the same route: "first thing I knowed, we was back on the same highway the bus run on this morning" (99).
Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Thu, 2014-06-26 16:23
The road that leaves Jefferson to head northwest is given a name only once: when Max Harriss races his car around the Square in "Knight's Gambit" and takes a skidding turn out of town, the story says he's driving off on "the Memphis highway" (213-14).
Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Thu, 2014-06-26 16:16
Pap Grier mentions in "Two Soldiers" that he had been "drafted and sent clean to Texas" during the first World War (85). While the Grier boy is at the bus station in Jefferson, trying to get to Memphis, Mr. Foote remarks that the boy "might have been in Missouri or Texas either yestiddy, for all we know" (91).
Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Thu, 2014-06-26 16:13
The First World War is mentioned when Pap Grier, as part of his argument against Pete’s plan to enlist, notes that "I was drafted . . . [and] your Uncle Marsh . . . received a actual wound on the battlefields of France, [which] is enough for me and mine to have to do to protect the country" (85).
Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Thu, 2014-06-26 16:07
When Pete Grier tells his parents that he is enlisting in "Two Soldiers," his father responds with "Our President in Washington, D.C. is watching the conditions and he will notify us [if you need to go to war]" (85).
Submitted by scott.t.chancel... on Thu, 2014-06-26 15:58
In 1941 the Philippine Islands were an American protectorate, with Commonwealth status. The Japanese invaded them a day after their attack on Pearl Harbor – or as the narrator puts it, based on the reports he and Pete hear on the radio, "they was at it in the Philippines now" (82).
