Customer Reviews

Works of William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury / Sanctuary / Light in August / As I Lay Dying

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After reading Faulkner's four major masterpieces -- The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying; and Light in August -- I've come to the conclusion that Light in August is far and away the easiest to read, has the most dramatic plot, the most intriguing primary characters in Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower and Joanna Burden, and even some of his most intriguing minor characters in Uncle Doc Hines and Mr. McEachern. Overall, it is his most readable and likeable masterpiece. And it leaves you wanting so much more.

The complex and ambiguous character of Joe Christmas alone could have been the source of three or four novels detailing different times in his life. While Christmas is hardly a likeable person, he is fascinating, hypnotic, a train wreck; you can't keep your eyes off him. His actions are morally ambiguous and inconsistent and yet fully understandable within his nature. As a creation he deserves to rank with Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Captain Ahab and Jay Gatsby in the pantheon of American literary characters.

Faulkner has a big mission here. The novel exposes the evils of racism both in the South and among white, northern abolitionists. It traffics in religious symbolism while savaging religious fanatacism. And it leaves one with a great deal of memorable violent and sexual imagery. And that's just for starters. This book is deep, and while it's storytelling is largely non-linear, it is far more palatable than the other three, which tend to be confusing and obscure. Enjoy this one. If you've never read Faulkner, it's a great starter.

I always recommend Light in August to people who say that Faulkner is impenetrable. Here the pages flow effortlessly by and the story line is easy to follow. There's none of the interior monologues that so confuse and derail those picking up the southern master for the first time. This plot is more traditional and will be readily appreciated by the average person.

"Light in August" may well be my favorite Faulkner novel. With its three interwoven plots, its use of flashback, and its family secrets, the book reads like a multi-generational saga--even though the main storyline occurs over a mere nine days. It deals unflinchingly and unsettlingly with such complex themes as isolation and bigotry in small-town life, race relationships (and, particularly, the meaning of race itself), the constrictions of a strict religious upbringing, and the terror of sexual pathology. And, like Faulkner's other work, it paints an often unsettling, occasionally gloomy, and even comic portrait of the American South.

The lives of several initially far-flung characters overlap in the novel's complex plot. First, the naïve Lena Grove arrives in Jefferson, searching for Lucas Burch, the man who abandoned her after getting her pregnant; she meets instead Byron Bunch, a quiet man who believes working on Saturdays will keep him out of trouble. Unrelated to Lena's personal calamity is Bunch's friend Reverend Gail Hightower, who lost his ministry and became a reclusive outcast when his wife openly cheated on him and eventually killed herself.

But the most powerful and memorable character is the mysterious Joe Christmas, a brooding wanderer whose ancestry is unknown and who finds work (and more) from Joanna Burden, a descendant of abolitionists who continues alone her family's historical advocacy for civil rights. Bringing the stories full-circle is Christmas's relationship with the elusive Lucas Burch; the two drifters operate a moonshine business while they live on Burden's property.

In the character of Joe Christmas, Faulkner has invested all his own conflicted feelings and insecurities about race and religion. Raised first in an orphanage and later by an abusive and fanatically religious man and his doting and pious wife, Christmas believes he may be part black, but, since he can "pass" for white, it's never made clear to him whether this is true. After the book was published, Faulkner claimed that "the tragic, central idea of the story [was] that he didn't know who he was, and there was no way for him to find out." Uncontrollable, random, and violent forces form Christmas's personality and cultivate his personal demons, but in the end the reader is undecided whether Christmas is a monster or a martyr.

The book's deliberate ambiguity is what makes it so potent, but there's enough mystery, murder, madness, and mayhem to keep it from being an aimless morality tale (and it is one of the easiest Faulkner books to read). It's the type of book you think about after you finish, and then flip through again to flesh out all the secrets and uncertainties you missed the first time around.

I only gave this book four stars because I don't believe it measures up to his two best works:Absalom, Absalom! and As I Lay Dying.-It is well worth remembering that Faulkner began his literary career with visions of being a poet. His first published work was a collection of verse entitled The Marble Faun. His failure as a poet outright may help explain why his prose is so turgid, convoluted but also profound and insightful beyond MERE prose. It's as if he's trying to correct his initial failure as intensely as posible. In the process of doing so, he became one of the gratest novelists in 20th Century American Literature. (Second only to Thomas Wolfe in my opinion.)-I guess the reason I like this book less than the aforementioned Faulkner works is the same reason most of the other reviewers like it more: It doesn't have enough of that turgid, mystical omniscient kaleidoscopic introspective prose that make the other novels so brilliant; But also, I admit, harder to plough through for a beginner.-Here's an example of what I'm talking about: Joe Christmas is observing his mistress in the daylight, "Meanwhile he could see her from a distance now and then in the daytime, about the rear premises, where moved articulate beneath the clean, austere garments that she wore that rotten richness ready to flow into putrefaction at a touch,like something growing in a swamp, not once looking toward the cabin or toward him. And when he thought of that other personality that seemed to exist somewhere in the darkness itself, it seemed to him that what he saw now by daylight was a phantom of someone whom the night sister had murdered and which now moved purposeless about the scenes of old peace, robbed even of the power of lamenting."-It's this eerie poetic perspctive that make Faulkner not just any writer, but a great one. It captures how fleeting identity and, indeed, life is. His language can make the characters vacillate between flesh-and-blood and psychopathic visions at the stroke of a pen. If you're new to Faulkner, read As I Lay Dying next and his perturbing magic will continue to grow on you. Perhaps, "like something growing in a swamp."-rare, foreboding, and to be approached circuitously, lest you slip into murky depths!

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.

I was recently assigned Faulkner for a major English III project; the teacher informed the class that we would read three books by our respective authors, write reports on each, and conclude with a research paper over all three. Having been assigned As I Lay Dying for summer reading, I was rather intimidated...Faulkner's style is hardly something to be taken lightly, and I found that I was still learning new (important) bits of the plot after many readings.

When I got to Light in August (my second report book, after Sound and the Fury), I was relieved; while still maintaining that obvious "hey, you're reading Faulkner!" air, it was much easier to comprehend and a highly intriguing plot. I really wish I had had the opportunity to start with Light in August because of that fact. It's Faulkner, but you don't have to rely on Cliff's Notes just to work your way through a single page. I would definitely recommend starting off with this one to get your feet wet, then move on to the greater challenges of his other works *cough cough* Absalom, Absalom! and Sound and the Fury *cough cough*.

After reading Faulkner's four major masterpieces -- The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying; and Light in August -- I've come to the conclusion that Light in August is far and away the easiest to read, has the most dramatic plot, the most intriguing primary characters in Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower and Joanna Burden, and even some of his most intriguing minor characters in Uncle Doc Hines and Mr. McEachern. Overall, it is his most readable and likeable masterpiece. And it leaves you wanting so much more.

The complex and ambiguous character of Joe Christmas alone could have been the source of three or four novels detailing different times in his life. While Christmas is hardly a likeable person, he is fascinating, hypnotic, a train wreck; you can't keep your eyes off him. His actions are morally ambiguous and inconsistent and yet fully understandable within his nature. As a creation he deserves to rank with Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Captain Ahab and Jay Gatsby in the pantheon of American literary characters.

Faulkner has a big mission here. The novel exposes the evils of racism both in the South and among white, northern abolitionists. It traffics in religious symbolism while savaging religious fanatacism. And it leaves one with a great deal of memorable violent and sexual imagery. And that's just for starters. This book is deep, and while it's storytelling is largely non-linear, it is far more palatable than the other three, which tend to be confusing and obscure. Enjoy this one. If you've never read Faulkner, it's a great starter.

The best reason to read this book is for the story of Gail Hightower. Light in August really mixes three stories into one: the story of Lena, the story of Joe and the story of Hightower. Although almost all criticism focuses on Joe, there is nevertheless a brilliantly crafted character within Hightower, a fallen minister who ends up trying to defend Joe. I also recommend this book to anyone reading Faulkner for the first time, as it is one of his easiest books but also contains a good intro to the themes, issues and characters that dominate Faulkner's writing.

In my opinion, the triple narrative of the novel(Lena, Hightower, Christmas), while it may be important to balanced structure of LiA, is superseded by passionate portrayal of Joe Christmas. The life of Lena, and characters connected with her (Burch, Bunch), represent what is usually taken as a norm of realistic novel. It is skillfully written, and, it seems to me, Faulkner intended it to serve as a bridge to "average" people and to end with the message of hope. Hightower is especially important to Faulkner as an example of wasted life, effectively destroyed by history's grip on minds and hearts of descendants of the Civil War's losers. He is depicted with air of aridity-sexually humiliated and deserted from wife, socially ostracized with innuendos of homosexuality and "nigger loving".Ironically, we may say that grand finale of his life and fulfilment come with his unselfish, but unsuccessful attempt to save Christmas from Grimm, even taking on himself accusation of homosexuality (he claims that Joe was with him in the time of death).In masterfully drawn final agony death liberates him, but in whirlpool of recent (Joe, Grimm) and Civil War (burden of history again) images. A few factors combine to ruin his life (history, Calvinist heritage, hypersensitivity-and also attempts (futile) for social and racial justice). He is a figure of great pathos, especially faulknerian in sentiment of "lost" life and inability to achieve a fulfilled life (all Faulkner's "positive" characters are childless, unable to cope with women, socially inferior). In the preliminary draft Faulkner intended Joe to be killed at the age of 33-the age of Christ.Three, maybe four strands are interwoven in the case of Christmas.First, there is a christian symbolism-his initials J.C., preliminary 33-ys death. Second, he has mythic prechristian attributes (follows life path of an archetypal hero: has no knowledge of his parents and ancestry, during his life has to face many mythical obstacles and impediments in his search for identity, at the end is dismembered like Dionysus, and, in final scene of mutilation and castration, his "triumphant" face that will haunt his pursuers, reminisces on "triumphant", or, risen Christ.) He is too violent to be purely christian figure-his "victimness" combines pagan and christian mythology. Third strand-he's like a hero of popular melodrama (young, handsome, unhappy, cursed, everyone against him, including himself.) Fourth-time and place:he is a victim of racism, social phenomenon that is shown as an abstraction, but a deadly one (Joe looks "white", probably is-his constant reminding that he may have negro blood is only a sign of his self-destructive impulses; Faulkner deliberately didn't clear this question, which is the main tragic theme of the novel. At the end, he is killed not because he had killed Joanna (another social pariah), but because he had slept with a white woman.) He doesn't know who he is (and I think that Faulkner in Japan, in Nagano, said:" To be deprived of self-identity, not to know who you are, and to know that you will never know, is the worst condition that can happen to man."), and suspicions that he might have partially negro blood, the fact he almost physiologically hates- all this makes him hate himself most intensely. The very fact that he, as a white racist, may be, at least partially, the hated object, leads him, step by step, to self-destruction (his end is in fact suicide-although he has a revolver, he doesn't want to use it.) To conclude: Faulkner's intention with his main character was to put not white racism, but what we could call convulsions and victimization in the struggle for self-identity.Faulkner's main hero cannot escape circumstances, cannot find liberation in universal human values, cannot escape his maniacal obsession with racial identity. Irreducible to social, psychological & psychoanalytical explanations (however alluring and "natural" they may seem, especially because of naturalist setting), Christmas is the only mythic hero in modern literature, by far surpassing Joyce's Bloom and Mann's Moses and Joseph. While Lena and Hightower are indispensable for overall balance of the novel, they're minors compared to Joe. To state in even more reductionist and extreme manner: at once murderer and victim, hero and villain, black and white, Christ and Devil-Christmas *is* "Light in August".

It is Faulkner's style that makes all of his books so great. This is the easiest read of his great novels - I think. Read it slowly and perhaps a second time. Don't concentrate on the story as much as on the descriptions and the long sentences. Read it slowly. When I read Faulkner, I read a sentence and close my eyes and try to picture what he has just said. It is easy to do because he is so good at that. You will see the characters. Read it that way and you will want to read it again. Then if you are really into it you can try The Sound And The Fury
Barry