Light In August Literary Analysis

William Faulkner presents various voices of the Old South in his Yoknapatawpha novel, Light in August. This novel not only displays the literary dialogues of different characters, but it also underlies a multiplicity of voices: each in confrontation with another. This confrontation gives the reader an insight into the different opinions of characters; thus, we also hear the voice of the reader who gives his own opinion. This novel is also in dialogue with other texts. These voices are interwoven highlighting the complexity of Faulkner’s novel. Light in August is a masterpiece for combining these conflicting voices of the south. This conflict is not the conflict of this novel only but of the whole era. Dialogism is what gives this play its strength and unity and plays an important role in the stylistic dimension of the novel. This essay is to explore the dialogic features of Light in August in five distinctive perspectives: dialogism at the level of individual characters, the intertextual relationship between this novel and other texts, primarily the Bible, the dialogic relationship in the structure of the novel, and the dialogic relationship between the author and the reader.

Novels are dialogic according to Dostoevsky, as they are:

A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousness, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices, a multitude of characters and fates in a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousness, with equal rights and each with its own works.

According to David Lodge, a dialogic novel is a “novel in which a variety of conflicting ideological positions are given a voice and set in play both between and within individual speaking subject, without being placed and judged by an auth...

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...nserted two different kinds of dialogism “great dialogue” and “microdialogue”. This plurality as claimed by some critics contributes to the looseness of the structure of the novel as characters seem divergent and events fragmented. However, this essay refutes this claim. Instead, dialogism seems to reinforce the unity and cohesion of the novel mainly through the symbolic dimension. Each character is in interaction with other characters even implicitly. That’s what gives this novel its strength. Dialogism is not only meant to convey the stylistic dimension of the novel, it also portrays the pluralistic dimension of the southern society at that era. The South, which frames the whole novel, is characterized by conflicting, juxtaposed, and multi voices. This reflects the crucial issues dealt with by Faulkner such as racism, gender issues, religious fanaticism,etc.