Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Tue, 2014-04-08 09:49
Shreve comes from somewhere in Canada. Miss Daingerfield thinks Canada is "marvelous" (148). (The later novel Absalom, Absalom! says Shreve is from the western Canadian province of Alberta.)
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Tue, 2014-04-08 09:42
The bridge over the Charles River where Quentin will commit suicide is a major location in the novel, but there has long been confusion about its location. Decades ago someone actually put up a memorial plaque for him on the Anderson Memorial Bridge in Cambridge, but that is much too close to Harvard (and was not built until five years after Quentin's death).
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Tue, 2014-04-08 09:15
Cairo, the capital of Egypt, is the only non-European location from which in "Knight's Gambit" Mrs. Harriss sends seasonal cards to her girlhood friends in Mississippi.
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Tue, 2014-04-08 09:10
Mrs. Bland takes her son Gerald, two young women, Spoade, Shreve and finally (after he is released by the magistrate) Quentin somewhere for an outdoor "party" (168). The location is not specified, and the fact that Quentin's mind is "in" Mississippi and his past for almost the entire scene does not make it any clearer where they are in Massachusetts. They do not seem far from the Italian neighborhood.
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Mon, 2014-04-07 23:55
The man referred to as "Squire" (139) who hears the complaint against Quentin involving Julio's sister is a local justice or magistrate. His courtroom is "a bare room smelling of stale tobacco" and "a scarred littered table," the book in which he enters Quentin's name is a "huge dusty" one, and he himself has "a fierce roach of iron gray hair" and wears "steel spectacles" (142). He fines Quentin but releases him without a formal charge.
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Mon, 2014-04-07 23:51
A minor character who is one of two young women on a pleasure outing with Mrs. Bland, Gerald, Spoade and Shreve when Quentin is arrested for kidnapping the unnamed Italian girl. Quentin notes that she and Miss Holmes, the other young woman, have "little white noses" (145) and look at him "through veils, with a kind of delicate horror" (141).
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Mon, 2014-04-07 23:48
A minor character who is one of two young women on a pleasure outing with Mrs. Bland, Gerald, Spoade and Shreve when Quentin is arrested for kidnapping the unnamed Italian girl. Quentin notes that she and Miss Daingerfield, the other young woman, have "little white noses" (145) and look at him "through veils, with a kind of delicate horror" (141).
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Mon, 2014-04-07 23:39
Julio is the older brother of the unnamed Italian girl whom Quentin tries to escort safely home from the bakery. Julio attacks Quentin, thinking that Quentin has tried to kidnap his sister, or as Julio himself puts it: "I killa heem . . . [he] steala my seester" (139). At the Squire's office Julio wants to press kidnapping charges, but instead accepts money from Quentin as compensation for the time he lost at work while chasing after him.
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Mon, 2014-04-07 23:22
One of the "three boys with fishing poles" Quentin first encounters on the bridge where he hides the flat irons (117) is named Kenny (122). This may be the one that the narrative consistently refers to as "the first boy" (122). He wears a "broken hat" (123) and seems to hold himself a bit apart from the other two boys. Quentin tries talking with him after they leave him, but "he paid me no attention" (123). He seems to have rejoined his friends by the time Quentin sees them again, swimming in the river.
Submitted by rlcoleman@usout... on Mon, 2014-04-07 22:16
This unnamed Italian immigrant does not speak English. When Quentin knocks at her door hoping to find the home of the little girl who has been accompanying him since he left the bakery, the woman seems to understand his question, but her answer is undecipherable: "'Si, si,' she said, holding back, showing me whatever it was" (132).
