Light in August
Encyclopedia
Light in August is a 1932 novel by the American author William Faulkner
.
Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom!
. Supposedly, one summer evening while sitting on a porch, his wife remarked on the strange quality that light in the south has during the month of August. Faulkner rushed out of his chair to his manuscript, scratched out the original title, and penciled in Light in August; however this story is probably apocryphal given the huge symbolic role that both light and the month of August play in the novel.
In 1998, the Modern Library
ranked Light in August 54th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time
magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
. There she is supported by Byron Bunch, an employee in the planing mill
who falls in love with Lena and hopes to marry her. The narrative plot of Lena's story is also circular; it builds a framework around the two other plot-strands. One of these is the story of the enigmatic character Joe Christmas
.
Christmas came to Jefferson three years before the novel's beginning, and got a job at the planing mill. The work at the planing mill is a cover up for his illegal alcohol business. He has a sexual relationship with Joanna Burden, an older woman who descended from a formerly powerful abolitionist family. Joanna Burden continues her ancestors' struggle for Black emancipation, which makes her an outsider in the society of Jefferson, much like Christmas.
Her relationship with Christmas begins rather unusually, with Christmas sneaking into her house to steal food, for he has not eaten in twenty-four hours. As a result of sexual frustration and the beginning of menopause, Joanna turns to religion. Joanna's turn to religion is frustrating for Christmas, who as a child ran away from his abusive adoptive parents who were conservatively religious. At the climax of her relation to Christmas, she tries to force him, by threatening him with a gun, to admit publicly his black ancestry and to join a black law firm. Joanna is murdered soon after. Her throat is slit and she is nearly decapitated. Her body was left to burn inside her house which is set on fire to cover the evidence of her murder. The murder was presumably committed by Joe Christmas, but this is not explicitly narrated. It appears that Lucas Burch/Joe Brown might have set the house on fire, however. Burch is initially cast as a possible murderer, as he was found inside the burning house by a passing farmer who rescued Joanna's body from the flames.
Thanks to a tip-off by Burch (Joe Brown, Christmas' previous business partner in the moon-shining venture and the father of Lena's child), Christmas is caught after giving himself up in a neighboring town. During his unsuccessful escape attempt, Christmas is shot and castrated by a national guardsman named Percy Grimm.
The third plot strand tells the story of Reverend Gail Hightower. He is obsessed by the past adventures of his Confederate
grandfather, who was killed while stealing chickens from a farmer's shed. Hightower's community dislikes him because of his sermons about his dead grandfather, and because of the scandal surrounding his personal life: his wife committed adultery, and later killed herself, turning the town against Hightower and effectively making him a pariah. The only character who does not turn his back on the Reverend Hightower is Byron Bunch, who visits Hightower from time to time. Bunch tries to convince Hightower to give the imprisoned Joe Christmas an alibi, but Hightower initially refuses. When Joe Christmas escapes from police custody he runs to Hightower's house, seeking to hide. Hightower then accepts Byron's suggestion, but it is too late as Percy Grimm is close behind. Hightower is then seen musing over his past alone in his house as he prepares for his own death.
Before Christmas' escape attempt, Hightower delivered Lena's child in the cabin where Brown and Christmas had been staying before the murder, and Byron arranges for Brown/Burch to come and see her. However, when Brown gets there, he runs again, and Byron follows him, instigating a fight which he loses. Brown gets into a moving train and is not seen again. At the end of the story, an anonymous man is talking to his wife about two strangers he picked up on a trip to Tennessee, recounting that the woman had a child and the man was not the father. This was Lena and Byron, who were conducting a half-hearted search for Brown, and they are eventually dropped off in Tennessee.
Isolation / Alienation / Existentialism
Isolation is arguably the main theme of the work. Lena, Christmas, Hightower, Bunch, and Joanna are all isolated to varying degrees. Christmas can be viewed as an existential character in search of meaning or identity. He is a victim figure, objectified, virtually powerless. Hightower's retreat from society and his reluctance to reenter it can be read to contrast Christmas. Similarly, Lena's naturalistic/primal representation contrasts Christmas.
figure, acting as father for Lucas Burch/Joe Brown. Christian imagery can be found throughout.
As detailed by Hlavsa's Faulkner and the Thoroughly Modern Novel (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1991), Light in August has 21 chapters, as does the Gospel of St. John. Each chapter in Faulkner corresponds to themes in John. For example, echoing John's famous, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God", is Lena's insistent faith in the "word" of Lucas, who is, after all, the father. John 5, the healing of the lame man by immersion, is echoed by Joe's repeatedly being immersed in liquids. The teaching in the temple in John 7 is echoed by McEachern's trying to teach Joe his catechism. Most important, the crucifixion occurs in John 19, the same chapter in which Joe is slain and castrated.
which has tainted his body and actions since birth. Blackness is connected with abyss-like imagery and a sort of impurity and separateness from God. This is especially troublesome for the European-appearing Christmas, who has no actual confirmation of his African lineage. Christmas lives his life always on the road, running from white societies which he believes he does not belong in. He hates these seemingly pure societies due to their inability to understand the depths of his irremovable damnation. His supposed racial identity seems to be a secret that he abhors as well as cherishes; he often willingly tells people that he is black, as he seems to enjoy their astonished, pitying, or hate-filled reactions.
Faulkner also explores the idea of the 'curse of racism' through Joanna and Hightower's characters. Both have been ostracized and threatened for their Black sympathies, yet both choose to remain in Jefferson.
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
.
Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working title for Absalom, Absalom!
Absalom, Absalom!
Absalom, Absalom! is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American South, taking place before, during, and after the Civil War, with the focus of the story on the life of Thomas Sutpen.-Plot...
. Supposedly, one summer evening while sitting on a porch, his wife remarked on the strange quality that light in the south has during the month of August. Faulkner rushed out of his chair to his manuscript, scratched out the original title, and penciled in Light in August; however this story is probably apocryphal given the huge symbolic role that both light and the month of August play in the novel.
In 1998, the Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
ranked Light in August 54th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Synopsis
The narrative structure consists of three connected plot-strands. The first strand tells the story of Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman who is trying to find Lucas Burch, the father of her unborn child. With that purpose she leaves her home town and walks several hundred miles to Jefferson, a town in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha CountyYoknapatawpha County
Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by the American author William Faulkner, based upon and inspired by Lafayette County, Mississippi and its county seat of Oxford, Mississippi...
. There she is supported by Byron Bunch, an employee in the planing mill
Planing mill
A planing mill is a facility that takes cut and seasoned boards from a sawmill and turns them into finished dimensional lumber. Machines used in the mill include the planer and matcher, the molding machines, and varieties of saws...
who falls in love with Lena and hopes to marry her. The narrative plot of Lena's story is also circular; it builds a framework around the two other plot-strands. One of these is the story of the enigmatic character Joe Christmas
Joe Christmas
Joe Christmas, also known as Joseph Hines or Joe McEachern, is a fictional character and a central protagonist, or antagonist, in William Faulkner's 1932 novel, "Light in August"...
.
Christmas came to Jefferson three years before the novel's beginning, and got a job at the planing mill. The work at the planing mill is a cover up for his illegal alcohol business. He has a sexual relationship with Joanna Burden, an older woman who descended from a formerly powerful abolitionist family. Joanna Burden continues her ancestors' struggle for Black emancipation, which makes her an outsider in the society of Jefferson, much like Christmas.
Her relationship with Christmas begins rather unusually, with Christmas sneaking into her house to steal food, for he has not eaten in twenty-four hours. As a result of sexual frustration and the beginning of menopause, Joanna turns to religion. Joanna's turn to religion is frustrating for Christmas, who as a child ran away from his abusive adoptive parents who were conservatively religious. At the climax of her relation to Christmas, she tries to force him, by threatening him with a gun, to admit publicly his black ancestry and to join a black law firm. Joanna is murdered soon after. Her throat is slit and she is nearly decapitated. Her body was left to burn inside her house which is set on fire to cover the evidence of her murder. The murder was presumably committed by Joe Christmas, but this is not explicitly narrated. It appears that Lucas Burch/Joe Brown might have set the house on fire, however. Burch is initially cast as a possible murderer, as he was found inside the burning house by a passing farmer who rescued Joanna's body from the flames.
Thanks to a tip-off by Burch (Joe Brown, Christmas' previous business partner in the moon-shining venture and the father of Lena's child), Christmas is caught after giving himself up in a neighboring town. During his unsuccessful escape attempt, Christmas is shot and castrated by a national guardsman named Percy Grimm.
The third plot strand tells the story of Reverend Gail Hightower. He is obsessed by the past adventures of his Confederate
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
grandfather, who was killed while stealing chickens from a farmer's shed. Hightower's community dislikes him because of his sermons about his dead grandfather, and because of the scandal surrounding his personal life: his wife committed adultery, and later killed herself, turning the town against Hightower and effectively making him a pariah. The only character who does not turn his back on the Reverend Hightower is Byron Bunch, who visits Hightower from time to time. Bunch tries to convince Hightower to give the imprisoned Joe Christmas an alibi, but Hightower initially refuses. When Joe Christmas escapes from police custody he runs to Hightower's house, seeking to hide. Hightower then accepts Byron's suggestion, but it is too late as Percy Grimm is close behind. Hightower is then seen musing over his past alone in his house as he prepares for his own death.
Before Christmas' escape attempt, Hightower delivered Lena's child in the cabin where Brown and Christmas had been staying before the murder, and Byron arranges for Brown/Burch to come and see her. However, when Brown gets there, he runs again, and Byron follows him, instigating a fight which he loses. Brown gets into a moving train and is not seen again. At the end of the story, an anonymous man is talking to his wife about two strangers he picked up on a trip to Tennessee, recounting that the woman had a child and the man was not the father. This was Lena and Byron, who were conducting a half-hearted search for Brown, and they are eventually dropped off in Tennessee.
Style and structure
In this novel, Faulkner was influenced by European literary stylistics and conventions, like the stream of consciousness technique, necessary to unveil the personal emotions. The novel's narrative is not organized in order, as it is interrupted by often lengthy flashbacks. The main focus of the narration constantly shifts from one character to another. Other significant stylistic devices are the numerous interior monologues that Faulkner uses to achieve the authenticity in his characters' voices. Just as a person does not know the history of a new acquaintance, Faulkner gives more information about characters as the novel progresses.Isolation / Alienation / ExistentialismExistentialismExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
/ Determinism
Isolation is arguably the main theme of the work. Lena, Christmas, Hightower, Bunch, and Joanna are all isolated to varying degrees. Christmas can be viewed as an existential character in search of meaning or identity. He is a victim figure, objectified, virtually powerless. Hightower's retreat from society and his reluctance to reenter it can be read to contrast Christmas. Similarly, Lena's naturalistic/primal representation contrasts Christmas.Christian
Joe Christmas, whose name is obviously symbolic, showed up in front of the orphanage on Christmas Day, symbolic of Jesus' birth. Faulkner has 66 total characters in his book, and there are 66 books in the Bible. Christmas's death (at age 33) is described in terms of rising and serenity. The bullets from Percy Grimm's gun pierce the wooden table behind which Christmas crouches like nails through a cross. Lena and her fatherless child parallel Mary and Christ. Byron Bunch acts as the JosephSaint Joseph
Saint Joseph is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Virgin Mary and the earthly father of Jesus Christ ....
figure, acting as father for Lucas Burch/Joe Brown. Christian imagery can be found throughout.
As detailed by Hlavsa's Faulkner and the Thoroughly Modern Novel (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1991), Light in August has 21 chapters, as does the Gospel of St. John. Each chapter in Faulkner corresponds to themes in John. For example, echoing John's famous, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God", is Lena's insistent faith in the "word" of Lucas, who is, after all, the father. John 5, the healing of the lame man by immersion, is echoed by Joe's repeatedly being immersed in liquids. The teaching in the temple in John 7 is echoed by McEachern's trying to teach Joe his catechism. Most important, the crucifixion occurs in John 19, the same chapter in which Joe is slain and castrated.
Misogynistic/homosexual
Christmas' relationships with women are strictly dysfunctional. He understands and engages in relationships only in violent terms. In fact, this is true to a lesser degree for the other characters as well. Some imagery can be interpreted as being homosexual, though others state that Joe's relationships with women were just conflicted. He thinks women are only out to make him cry.Racial
Christmas' racial identity (or lack thereof) is only a part of a larger theme of identity. His Negro blood, as defined by the behavior of others toward him, represents a sort of original sinOriginal sin
Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
which has tainted his body and actions since birth. Blackness is connected with abyss-like imagery and a sort of impurity and separateness from God. This is especially troublesome for the European-appearing Christmas, who has no actual confirmation of his African lineage. Christmas lives his life always on the road, running from white societies which he believes he does not belong in. He hates these seemingly pure societies due to their inability to understand the depths of his irremovable damnation. His supposed racial identity seems to be a secret that he abhors as well as cherishes; he often willingly tells people that he is black, as he seems to enjoy their astonished, pitying, or hate-filled reactions.
Faulkner also explores the idea of the 'curse of racism' through Joanna and Hightower's characters. Both have been ostracized and threatened for their Black sympathies, yet both choose to remain in Jefferson.