The Wild Palms: [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem]
Buy on Amazon — The Wild Palms: [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem]
Position in the vault
This note is backed by a local extracted source and remains part of the vault's crosslinked book layer.
Core concepts
- Ecological Constraint: water, cold, pregnancy, flood, and bodily vulnerability set the limits within which Harry, Charlotte, and the tall convict try to act.
- Coercive Labor: the penal farm turns the tall convict's body, movement, and rescue work into state-directed labor even when the flood briefly pushes him outside ordinary custody.
- State Capacity: guards, newspapers, National Guard tents, deputies, paperwork, and resentencing show institutions struggling to preserve command when disaster makes their categories ridiculous.
- Knowledge Preservation: Harry's final choice treats grief as the only surviving medium in which Charlotte can remain real.
Detailed overview
Faulkner constructs The Wild Palms as two interleaved stories, not as a single plot with subplots. The "Wild Palms" sections follow Harry Wilbourne and Charlotte Rittenmeyer from a New Orleans encounter into flight, poverty, work, pregnancy, abortion, trial, and prison. The "Old Man" sections follow an unnamed tall convict during the 1927 Mississippi flood after he is sent in a skiff to rescue people from the levee break at Mound's Landing. The alternation makes the two stories argue with each other through situation: one man tries to preserve illicit love from respectability and money, while the other tries to return to lawful captivity and be free of the pregnant woman and baby the flood has forced upon him.
The Harry and Charlotte story begins at the end, on the Mississippi coast, where a local doctor is called after midnight because Charlotte is bleeding in a rented beach cottage. The doctor, his wife Martha, the real-estate agent Cofer, the gumbo, the oleander hedge, the beach chair, and the clashing palms surround Harry and Charlotte with provincial judgment before the book gives their history. That frame matters because Charlotte is already dying from Harry's failed abortion, and Harry's later memories of New Orleans, Chicago, Wisconsin, Utah, and jail are contained inside the doctor's baffled attempt to diagnose not only her body but the whole scandal of their love.
The "Old Man" story begins with two convicts at the Mississippi penal farm: the tall attempted train robber shaped by Diamond Dick and Jesse James pamphlets, and the short plump convict sentenced to 199 years after a woman, a stolen automobile, a filling-station robbery, and a dead attendant. The flood enters through newspapers, levee gangs, Memphis headlines, Secretary Hoover, martial law, and the break at Mound's Landing. Once the tall convict is sent out in a skiff, the Mississippi River becomes a force that defeats ordinary direction, language, and intention. He wants only to retrieve a man from a cottonhouse, rescue a pregnant woman, and return the boat, but the flood carries him through bayous, the Yazoo, an Indian mound, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, and back.
Faulkner makes water do opposite work in the two narratives. Charlotte imagines water as the right place to die, the cool element that could wash memory out of body and blood, while the convict experiences water as a hostile medium that snatches him away from the land, plow, barracks, mules, and known rules of the prison farm. The wild palms, beach wind, Lake Pontchartrain, the Wisconsin lake, the Utah mine, the Mississippi flood, the Atchafalaya basin, and the River all carry people out of ordinary arrangements. But water does not purify anything: Charlotte dies, Harry chooses grief, the convict is punished with ten more years, and the baby survives as part of the burden he never wanted.
The paired endings make the book's ethical contrast blunt without making either story simple. Harry, visited by Charlotte's husband Rittenmeyer in jail, rejects the cyanide-like tablet and chooses to keep memory in the flesh because "between grief and nothing" he will take grief. The tall convict, officially discharged as dead and then re-sentenced for attempted escape after returning voluntarily with the skiff, accepts the added ten years and dismisses women with a final obscenity. One man clings to suffering because it preserves love; the other clings to prison because it preserves a knowable order. Faulkner lets both choices look like defeats.
Source links
Chapter-by-chapter notes
Chapter 1 - The Wild Palms
Summary: A forty-eight-year-old Mississippi coast doctor descends the stairs of his oil-lit beach cottage after midnight, thinking about the young renters next door: Harry, Charlotte, the gumbo his wife Martha made, the oleander hedge, the real-estate agent Cofer, and the woman in faded jeans who sits in a beach chair facing the water. Harry asks to use the telephone because Charlotte is bleeding, and the doctor, learning she needs medical help, follows him into the rented cottage. The doctor first guesses lungs, then discovers a botched abortion and hears Charlotte raging at Harry about the five dollars, the bungling, and the pain while the wild palms clash in the wind outside. Source anchors: coast doctor; Martha; Cofer; gumbo; Charlotte; bleeding.
Analysis: Coast doctor, Martha, Cofer, gumbo, Charlotte, and bleeding set the whole Harry story inside diagnosis and judgment before the romance is narrated. The doctor and Martha represent local respectability, but the gumbo shows that even their condemnation is mixed with a compulsory charity. Cofer's gossip about pants and marriage prepares the social charge against Charlotte. The bleeding matters because it makes the love story retrospective from the start: every later escape from convention is already moving toward this rented cottage and Harry's failed medical act.
Chapter 2 - Old Man
Summary: In May 1927 at the Mississippi State penal farm, Faulkner introduces the tall convict imprisoned for attempted train robbery after trusting Diamond Dick and Jesse James pamphlets, and the short plump convict serving 199 years after a woman, a stolen automobile, a filling-station robbery, and a dead attendant. The short convict reads Memphis newspaper reports about Cairo and Memphis gauges, sandboils, levee gangs, Secretary Hoover, National Guard, martial law, and refugees at Vicksburg. The men hope rain will keep them from field work, but at midnight the guards wake them because the levee has gone out at Mound's Landing. Source anchors: 1927 flood; penal farm; Diamond Dick; 199 years; Memphis newspaper; Mound's Landing.
Analysis: 1927 flood, penal farm, Diamond Dick, 199 years, Memphis newspaper, and Mound's Landing establish the convict story as a collision between printed fantasy, state punishment, and natural force. Diamond Dick explains why the tall convict distrusts stories: they trained him badly for train robbery and got him fifteen years. The Memphis newspaper turns the flood into a second kind of print that the convicts first consume from a distance, but that information does not become coordination until Mound's Landing forces guards and prisoners into action. The levee break sends the penal farm's controlled labor into a world the guards cannot fully command.
Chapter 3 - The Wild Palms
Summary: Harry Wilbourne's history begins in New Orleans, where he is a poor twenty-seven-year-old medical intern living on his dead father's two-thousand-dollar bequest, money orders from his half sister, cigarettes, and hospital routine. Flint takes him to a Vieux Carre studio party at Crowe's, where Harry meets Charlotte Rittenmeyer, Rat Rittenmeyer's wife, a sculptor with yellow eyes, a burn scar, two daughters, and hands hardened by clay, brass, and stone. Harry and Charlotte meet for lunches, go to a hotel, fail to consummate the encounter because of money and fear, then Harry finds a wallet with $1,278 and uses it to take Charlotte away by train while Rat gives him a return-ticket check and demands monthly proof that she is alive. Source anchors: Harry Wilbourne; New Orleans; Charlotte Rittenmeyer; Rat; $1,278; Hammond.
Analysis: Harry Wilbourne, New Orleans, Charlotte Rittenmeyer, Rat, $1,278, and Hammond show love beginning as a rupture in timing, poverty, and marriage. New Orleans gives Harry the first space outside hospital discipline, while Charlotte Rittenmeyer gives him a body and will he cannot assimilate into his old poverty. Rat is not a caricatured husband; his check and the Hammond farewell make his suffering part of the arrangement. The $1,278 matters because money, which first blocks the lovers, also makes their flight possible and morally tainted.
Chapter 4 - Old Man
Summary: The convicts are chained into trucks with guards, picks, and shovels, then driven through floodwater that covers roads, cabins, barns, livestock, telephone poles, and fields. They reach a town, a cotton compress, National Guard tents, army kitchens, skiffs, a train moving through water, a burning plantation house, and finally the levee where refugees, mules, cows, soldiers, guards, and convicts gather beside the deep sound of the Mississippi, called the Old Man. At dawn the tall convict finally sees the River itself, a steel-colored and chocolate-frothy expanse, before he is sent out with the short convict in a skiff to rescue people from a cottonhouse. Source anchors: chained trucks; cotton compress; National Guard; burning plantation; Old Man; skiff.
Analysis: Chained trucks, cotton compress, National Guard, burning plantation, Old Man, and skiff turn the flood from newspaper story into overwhelming fact. The chained trucks show state capacity continuing even where roads vanish, because guards can still move prisoners, tools, and orders through waterlogged space. The cotton compress and National Guard make the disaster administrative, with tents and food lines, but the burning plantation and Old Man expose the ecological constraint that administration can route around only briefly. The skiff matters because it is both rescue tool and sentence: the tall convict is ordered into freedom-like motion while still acting under prison obligation.
Chapter 5 - The Wild Palms
Summary: Harry and Charlotte's flight carries them through Chicago, a snowbound Wisconsin lake, pulp writing, Charlotte's job in a store, McCord's friendship, an apartment, a typewriter, and the gradual discovery that solvency has turned Harry into the very husband he thought he had escaped being. He tells McCord that money first trapped him, then respectability trapped him, and that he and Charlotte must leave for a Utah mine in February because the apartment, the groceries, the butcher, the coffee pot, and the phrase "my wife" have begun to domesticate love. Charlotte boards the train; McCord and Harry drink in the station bar; Harry toasts freedom and love before leaving for the Buckners' mining camp. Source anchors: Chicago; Wisconsin lake; McCord; typewriter; Utah mine; respectability.
Analysis: Chicago, Wisconsin lake, McCord, typewriter, Utah mine, and respectability show Harry trying to keep love from becoming marriage by fleeing each successful arrangement. The Wisconsin lake tests hunger and cold, but the typewriter and apartment frighten him more because they create habits. McCord's skepticism gives the reader a sane witness to Harry's self-dramatizing logic. The Utah mine matters because Harry chooses a harsher landscape not to improve life with Charlotte but to protect love from the moral economy of rent, jobs, groceries, and household reciprocity.
Chapter 6 - Old Man
Summary: After the skiff is swept away, the tall convict loses the short convict, bloodies his face, fights the current, and finds a pregnant woman in a tree wearing a calico wrapper, army tunic, sunbonnet, and men's brogans. He tries to find the cottonhouse and the missing man but instead is carried through bayous, cottonfields, the Yazoo running backward, rain, shanty boats, hostile men with shotguns, and repeated refusals from people who will not take the woman unless he burns his convict clothes or stops trying to surrender. He paddles toward towns, gets shot at by soldiers when he tries to surrender, follows a swimming deer, reaches an Indian mound, and hears the infant's first cry as he falls back into the water. Source anchors: pregnant woman; Yazoo; shanty boat; shotgun; Indian mound; infant's cry.
Analysis: Pregnant woman, Yazoo, shanty boat, shotgun, Indian mound, and infant's cry make the tall convict's ordeal a grotesque rescue he never wanted. The Yazoo running backward destroys his practical knowledge of direction, turning floodwater into ecological constraint that defeats maps, routes, and intention. The shanty boat and shotgun show that ordinary people can be as obstructive as the flood, because they refuse his simple wish to hand over the woman. The Indian mound gives him land at last, but the infant's cry binds him to the female burden he has been trying to escape.
Chapter 7 - The Wild Palms
Summary: Harry and Charlotte reach the Utah mining camp run by Buckner and his wife Billie, where blankets, sheep coats, wool underwear, a commissary, hard Western speech, and isolation replace the Chicago apartment. Charlotte spars with Billie, receives news about her children, and continues to test whether she and Harry can live without the protections and corruptions of ordinary marriage. Harry works in the mine setting, but Charlotte's pregnancy, the memory of Rat and the daughters, the Buckners' scrutiny, and the couple's poverty make the attempted purity of Utah impossible to sustain. Source anchors: Buckner; Billie; Utah; sheep coats; Charlotte's children; pregnancy.
Analysis: Buckner, Billie, Utah, sheep coats, Charlotte's children, and pregnancy make the mine camp another failed refuge. Buckner and Billie are not genteel like Martha or Rat, but their questions still expose Harry and Charlotte's status. Utah's cold and sheep coats strip romance down to bodily endurance. Charlotte's children remain present even in absence, and pregnancy makes the lovers' revolt against domestic form produce the most domestic fact possible.
Chapter 8 - Old Man
Summary: On the Indian mound, the tall convict helps the pregnant woman give birth with a jagged tin can, a cut shoelace, shotgun-shell matches, hot water, a dead rabbit, and a fire among cypress knees, snakes, deer, and stranded animals. He feeds the woman and baby rabbit broth, ties the skiff with grapevine, sleeps on solid mud, then sets out again through mist and flood to find a way back. Eventually he returns with the woman and baby, still trying to deliver the skiff and complete his duty, and the deputy receives them with the line that the boat is back, the woman is here, but the man on the cottonhouse was never found. Source anchors: tin can; shoelace; rabbit broth; snakes; grapevine; deputy.
Analysis: Tin can, shoelace, rabbit broth, snakes, grapevine, and deputy show the convict's unwanted competence. The tin can and shoelace turn trash into obstetric tools, while rabbit broth keeps the woman alive. Snakes and grapevine make the mound feel like a temporary ark rather than a safe home. The deputy's reaction matters because institutional legibility reduces the ordeal to returned objects and people: boat, woman, baby, missing man. It cannot record what it cost the convict to complete the assignment.
Chapter 9 - The Wild Palms
Summary: Back in the coast frame, the doctor tells Harry he has murdered Charlotte after the abortion, and Harry is later held in jail while Rat Rittenmeyer visits him. Harry remembers the beach cottage, the hospital, Charlotte's death, and the legal consequences of his act while Rat offers him a tablet so he can die rather than endure prison. Harry realizes Rat is not acting for him but for Charlotte, who had made Rat promise not to leave memory in Harry's bungling hands; Harry grinds the tablet into powder and chooses to live with memory, deciding that between grief and nothing he will take grief. Source anchors: coast doctor; murdered Charlotte; jail; Rat Rittenmeyer; tablet; grief.
Analysis: Coast doctor, murdered Charlotte, jail, Rat Rittenmeyer, tablet, and grief bring Harry's story to its chosen punishment. The coast doctor names the abortion as murder, but Rat Rittenmeyer's visit gives the death a private marital charge beyond the law. The tablet offers nothingness, a way to end both prison and memory. Harry's choice of grief makes knowledge preservation bodily rather than archival: pain in the flesh becomes the only remaining form in which Charlotte can exist.
Chapter 10 - Old Man
Summary: A young emissary from the Governor arrives at the penitentiary with papers showing that the tall convict has been officially discharged as dead because the deputy reported him lost. The Warden, Deputy Buckworth, and the emissary debate the embarrassment: the convict returned voluntarily with the boat, the woman, and the baby, but because the paperwork says he is dead or free, the state solves the problem by calling his absence attempted escape and adding ten years to his sentence while transferring Buckworth to the highway patrol. The tall convict accepts the added time, tells the others how he worked on sorghum, at a sawmill, in cotton, gambled enough to pay for transport, changed back into prison stripes, returned the skiff, and finally dismisses women altogether. Source anchors: Governor's emissary; official discharge; Buckworth; ten years; sorghum; prison stripes.
Analysis: Governor's emissary, official discharge, Buckworth, ten years, sorghum, and prison stripes make the state as absurd as the flood but more permanent. Official discharge could free the convict, yet the paperwork is rearranged to preserve institutional order over factual sense. Buckworth is rewarded with highway patrol work while the man who returned the boat receives ten years, so administrative legibility converts voluntary return into attempted escape. Sorghum and other jobs show he could live outside, but prison stripes are what he chooses to put back on. His final rejection of women seals the flood adventure as a return to captivity by preference.