William Faulkner

In describing the flora, the narrator is careful to include the tropical palm tree, a number of which of varying species can be found in San Antonio. The palm functions as one of the central symbols of the novel, connected with Charlotte Rittenmeyer as a combination of love goddess and femme fatale, who places her passion for Harry Wilbourne above all other considerations, including her husband and two daughters.

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Literary San Antonio WILLIAM FAULKNER
William Faulkner commemorative stamp Image Credit: AccuNet/AP	Although few in number, William Faulkner’s allusions to Texas are consistently negative, and his brief use of San Antonio is especially sordid. For example, in his amusing short story "Spotted Horses" a ruthless entrepreneur from East Texas, in collusion with Flem Snopes, exploits the poor whites of the Frenchman’s Bend area of Yoknapatawpha County (Faulkner’s fictitious "postage-stamp" shaped county located in northern Mississippi). Specifically, the enterprising but unprincipled Texan cons the people into buying some worthless, half-wild mustangs which have been imported from the Lone Star State because he understands their association of horse ownership with social status. Similarly, in the Snopes Trilogy , Byron Snopes escapes to Texas after embezzling funds from the bank in Jefferson, where he had worked for the Sartoris family. While in the vicinity of El Paso, he marries an Apache squaw, though where he could have found such a mate is a mystery. Later he takes his wild crew of Texas half-breeds--three sons and a daughter--back to Mississippi.
Rustic structures in San Antonio enhanced by palm trees and oleander	San Antonio itself finds a place in the Faulkner canon with the novel The Wild Palms (1939), published in alternating chapter format with Old Man, partly because of counterpointing thematic material concerning childbirth and abortion. The former narrative concerns itself with the abortion issue, with the unlicensed physician Harry Wilbourne performing a botched abortion on his lover, Charlotte Rittenmeyer, while they are subsisting in a seamy area of San Antonio. Actually, they have recently left a mining community in the mountains of Utah and are heading back to Louisiana and Mississippi, where Charlotte will eventually die of complications and Harry will be indicted for murder. Why Faulkner selected the unfamiliar setting of San Antonio for the sordid details of the abortion is puzzling, but it seems to have held some connection in Faulkner’s mind with New Orleans: They reached San Antonio, Texas, with a hundred and fifty-two dollars and a few cents. It was warm here, it was almost like New Orleans; the pepper trees had been green all winter and the oleander and mimosa and lantana were already in bloom and cabbage palms exploded shabbily in the mild air as in Louisiana. They had a single room with a decrepit gas plate, reached by an outside gallery in a shabby wooden house. (154)
	In describing the flora, the narrator is careful to include the tropical palm tree, a number of which of varying species can be found in San Antonio. The palm functions as one of the central symbols of the novel, connected with Charlotte Rittenmeyer as a combination of love goddess and femme fatale, who places her passion for Harry Wilbourne above all other considerations, including her husband and two daughters.
"Cabbage palms" and oleander flourishing in San Antonio	Perhaps San Antonio was an impersonal enough location for Faulkner that he could focus on it for the unpleasant details associated with Charlotte’s abortion. Although no specific identifiable landmarks are mentioned, Harry does visit a brothel to seek help for resolving his lover’s dilemma. He finds himself in a shabby area of town that resembles Graham Greene’s description of the brothels on Matamoros Street in Another Mexico. The proprietress greets him with the comment, So you’re a stranger in San Tone [an echo of O. Henry?]. . . . Well, some of the sweetest friendships I ever seen was made in one night or even after one session between two folks that never even seen one another an hour ago. I got American girls here or Spanish (strangers like Spanish girls. It’s the influence of the moving pictures, I always say) and one little Eyetalian that just--. . . (155)
	This ugly Faulknerian picture of San Antonio, in counterpoint with the story's emphasis on the beauty of the flora, is less a result of first-hand observation than of Faulkner’s own symbol-rich imagination. As such, it provides another example of Faulkner’s oft-cited emphasis on "the human heart in conflict with itself."