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Title: Light in August: The Corrected Text (Vintage International) by William Faulkner ISBN: 0-679-73226-8 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.37 (46 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Story About Questions
Comment: This is a great story. It is the easiest book in terms of structure (as much as Faulkner can be easy!) by Faulkner that I have read. _Light in August_ has such a complicated plot, that I cannot even begin to summarize it and do a good job, but I will make an ill-fated attempt at doing so. Lena Grove is looking for the father of her child, and she finds her way to Jefferson, Mississippi. While in Jefferson she meets myriad characters, among them are Byron Bunch, who is in love with her; Joe Brown, the father of her baby; Joe Christmas, a confused man in search of his ancestry; and Gail Hightower, a former preacher who is haunted by his Grandfathers demise. And that is only a few of the characters. I don't think that this book is better than _The Sound and the Fury_, but I do think that it is far better than _As I Lay Dying_. It certainly is a masterpiece and deserves all of the critical acclaim that it has received. Every time I read William Faulkner I am blown away. He writes with such feeling and compassion. _Light in August_ cemented my inkling that Faulkner was the greatest writer America has ever produced.
Rating: 4
Summary: Faulkner's Method and Meaning in Light in August
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: An epic of knowledge and ignorance
Comment: LIGHT IN AUGUST is one of Faulkner's knottier works, layered with braided plotlines and themes. It could just as well be a work of science fiction, set as it is in a post-apocalyptic world, where cast-up survivors stagger about in a frightful disconnect, trying to reconstruct meaning and a code to live by. Of course, they are doing a terrible job. This is no nuclear winter, though. It is the rural south of the early 20th century where the Civil War happened yesterday and the failures of Reconstruction continue to take their toll.
The plot lines are not easily sorted out for a capsule account. It is tempting to begin, "At the heart of the book . . .," but Faulkner would be the first to respond, "how do you know with any certainty that that is the nucleus, that is the real truth?" The tattered social code that these people have snatched from the fire of the Civil War comes down to a few "givens"- white is supreme, black is untenable, men must be strong leaders unbent by lesser forces, women must be virgins until they marry and true to their husbands, and murder, especially of white by black, must not go unpunished. Truth is at once harshly stolid and easily muddied.
The author devotes the greatest amount of energy to the grizzly murder of a spinster, ostracized by her Mississippi community by virtue of her Yankee heritage and her social ministerings to the black community. That she is white and the accused is assumed to have partial black heritage gives the white populace something with which it can define itself, a fierce, righteous drive to avenge the death. Faulkner sorts out the histories of the players to determine why they have become involved, the truth of their individual existences as well as their knowledge in respect to the case. Weaving in and out, like a stupid Cassandra, is the very pregnant Lena, who begins the book by pursuing on foot her missing boyfriend out of Alabama, and continues to pursue him even while it is obvious he is a lost cause, even when there is someone else willing to assume responsibilities.
Faulkner's use of language and symbolism is breathtaking. This is worthy reading, but do be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. Seventy-five plus years later, it causes you to ask the disturbing question, have we come far enough away from the cave of dark violence and ignorance he depicts?
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Title: Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text by William Faulkner ISBN: 0679732187 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 November, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text by William Faulkner ISBN: 0679732241 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Sanctuary: The Corrected Text by William Faulkner ISBN: 0679748148 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner ISBN: 0679732179 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684800713 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 March, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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