|
|
26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Faulkner's Method and Meaning in Light in August, May 2, 2001
Although Light In August originally begins with the story of Lena Grove in search for the father of her unborn child, William Faulkner presents one of literature's most tragic yet memorable depictions of racial injustice in his biracial character, Joe Christmas. The novel depicts Christmas's struggle for acceptance not only from the 1920's southern United States, but also from himself. Faulkner's use of picturesque diction and his accurate use of both white and black dialect in Alabama heighten his dramatization of Christmas's strife. Faulkner brilliantly presents four of the novel's main characters and their relationship to the community and human beings within the first four chapters. Oddly enough, all four of the characters are isolated from society in one way or another. Society isolates Lena Grove due to her illegitimate child; however, Grove also isolates herself because of her constant travel in search of the child's father. Reverend Gail Hightower is isolated from Jefferson, the small Alabama town in which most of the novel takes place, because of his wife's adulterous affairs. Byron Bunch, whose only friend is Hightower, isolates himself by choice in order to keep himself out of mischief. Finally, Joe Christmas isolates himself from the rest of the workers in the planing mill because of his mixed racial heritage. Christmas haughtily wears his city clothes in the midst of the other workers' overalls, and is therefore an easy target for ridicule and resentment. Throughout the novel, Faulkner utilizes the simple, irrational, and slightly ignorant white members of the community to contrast the respectability and hardship of the local blacks. Characters such as Joanna Burden, whose last name is synonymous to Rudyard Kipling's "white man's burden", represent the consequences of white society mixing with black. Faulkner uses biblical allusions throughout Light in August, which mostly surround Joe Christmas. Christmas's name symbolizes that of Jesus of Nazareth. He was born three days before the holiday of Christmas, and on Christmas Eve was found in a basket on the doorsteps of an orphanage. Christmas's adoptive father was a strict, white Presbyterian farmer named McEachern who often abused Christmas. Unbeknownst to McEachern, his wife secretly fed Christmas when her husband restricted him from eating and often gave him money. On one particular occasion after Mr. McEachern had beaten Christmas, Mrs. McEachern went up to Christmas's room and took off his shoes to wash his feet, just as Mary Magdalene did to Jesus when asking for forgiveness of her sins. After the murder of Joanna Burden, Joe Brown, Christmas's supposed friend and accomplice in their business of illegally selling whiskey, turns Christmas in for the murder in hopes of receiving the money reward for the murderer's capture. Here, Brown serves as a figure similar to Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Christ who eventually turned Him over to the Pharisees for a price of forty pieces of silver. Also, Reverend Hightower serves as a godly figure throughout the novel, keeping a moral balance over the other characters (especially Byron Bunch). Hightower even turns his back on Christmas when the police find Christmas in his home and is caught, just as God turned his back when Jesus was crucified. Written within only seven years of each other, Light in August can easily be compared with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Both novels depict the failure of the American Dream. Steinbeck utilizes the failure of the American Dream in his story of the Joads, a poor farm family from Oklahoma who travel to California in hopes of finding prosperity to escape the Dust Bowl. The Joads's dream ends in lost hope, however, when they find that California was a deception. Faulkner presents the failure of the dream to another underprivileged group in 1920's America - the African Americans. Even though Christmas is only half-black, Faulkner uses him to represent the negligence of justice presented to blacks in the southern U.S. Also, both authors display a slight similarity in writing style. Both authors appear to be excessive in words and have "middle" chapters in which they use for flashbacks and character and theme development. Although Light in August has over 500 pages, Faulkner employs each word and chapter. With his use of diction and the radical allusion of his main character Joe Christmas to Jesus Christ, Faulkner effectively introduces the themes of Light in August, which include the racial injustice among the South's black population, the conflict between the individual and the community, and the hardships of finding self-identity. Also, Faulkner captures the reader's attention with his characters in Light in August by giving shockingly realistic cases of religious fanaticism, racial hatred, and brutal violence in an attempt to accurately depict the moral and social psychology of human beings.
|
by William Faulkner
by William Faulkner
by William Faulkner
by Ernest Hemingway
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
See all Editorial Reviews
