Product Description

Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29230 in Books
• Published on: 1990-10-01
• Released on: 1991-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780679732266
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
?For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics.? ?Ralph Ellison


From the Hardcover edition. -- Review

Review
“For all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics.” —Ralph Ellison


From the Hardcover edition.

From the Inside Flap
Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man.

Customer Reviews

Readable and Riveting.
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.

His Most Likeable Masterpiece
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.

Faulkner's Method and Meaning in Light in August
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.