Faulkner's Ability to Draw Empathy From the Reader

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“Dysfunctional families pervade Yoknapatawpa County” (Urgo 66). The ventures of the three key characters in Light in August lead to inevitable outcomes due to their families’ neglect. Each individual respectively has his own faults in life. However, it is a mixture of childhood negligence and happenstance which causes these characters to isolate themselves and commit negative acts. Undoubtedly, William Faulkner develops empathy through the trials of Hightower, Lena Grove, and Joe Christmas as they confront their families’ past actions. Hightower’s wife betrayal and cruel treatment from his parishioners alter his viewpoint on life. “With institutional religion having failed him, the defrocked minister retreats from society and attempts the psychic healing that defines the rest of his life” ( Urgo 98 ). After being tied to a tree, beaten unconscious, and threatened by the K.K.K., Hightower decides to turn to literature, art, and a more humanist, nonreligious personal philosophy to compensate for the failings of his prior life of faith. Additionally, his grandfather has always been a mystery to him, engulfing him further into isolation. Hightower’s grandfather was killed during a raid on Jefferson during the Civil War. As a little boy, he remembered looking at “his grandfather’s gray Confederate uniform with its mysterious blue patch” (Faulkner 469). In Jefferson after the death of his wife and his banning from the town Hightower becomes an isolated outcast. Rejected by society, he fails in his appointed task as minister of the town, delivering incoherent sermons while his wife carries on obvious sexual affairs. “ It was as if he couldn’t get religion and that galloping cavalry and his dead grandfather shot from the galloping hors... ... middle of paper ... ...and through an unfolding of events display to the reader how their childhoods and families past actions unquestionably, leads to their stance at the end of the novel. Works Cited Aiken, Conrad. Contemporary Literary Critism. Eds. Dedria Bryfonski and Phyllis Carmel Mendelson. Detriot, MI: Oxford University Press, 1938. Vol. 8. Page Number: 208. Faulkner, William. Light in August. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Friedman, Alan Warren. The Framelike Structure of Light in August. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1998. Page Number:135 Kazin, Alfred. Faulkner, A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Robert Penn Warren. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1966. Page Number: 161-2. Urgo, Joseph R. A William Faulkner Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert W. Hamblin and Charles A. Peek. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Page Number: 66.

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