Post-World War II St. Louis

Most of the novel takes place in post-World War II St. Louis. As Jack describes it, “St. Louis was a vast hive of enterprise, grocers and barbers and barkeeps doing whatever they did well enough to be there from one day to the next, one year to the next” (79). He thinks that St. Louis looks like “a corner of Eden where the bad news had not arrived quite yet,” and notices all the “shiny vegetation, fat with life, untried by weather” (83). We also learn that St. Louis at this time was considered a German town, “which made things a little unpredictable where the great issues were concerned” (145). The author also tells us that St. Louis at this time was half-black.

Cemetery

The cemetery is where Jack and Della run into each other and have their first real conversation. It is enormous, about three hundred...