Light in August - Hightower's Epiphany
Most criticism concerning Faulkner's novel, Light in August, usually considers the character of Joe Christmas. Christmas certainly deserves the attention paid to him, but too often this attention obscures other noteworthy elements of the complex novel. Often lost in the shuffle is another character, the Reverend Gail Hightower, who deserves greater scrutiny. A closer examination of Hightower reveals Faulkner's deep concern for the South and the collective suffering of its people. Hightower, through his own personal epiphany, transcends the curse under which the South has suffered for so long.
Of course, the central character of Joe Christmas has dominated criticism of the novel, primarily because he represents the problematic and touchy issue of racism. Those who wish to prove that Faulkner either was or was not a racist often turn to Christmas--who is abandonded as a baby outside an orphanage and found on Christmas day (hence his name); called a "nigger bastard" (LIA 135) by the dietitian at the orphanage when he catches her with a young doctor; and ever after suspects that he might possess some Negro blood. All this prompts many readers to see in Christmas a symbol of racial tensions and conflict. For instance, in his italicized amendments to the excerpt from the novel he used for The Portable Faulkner, Malcolm Cowley refers to the character as "Joe Christmas, the mulatto" (51).
Unfortunately, such readings assume facts not in evidence. Cowley's additions do more than provide a necessary context; they resolve a question about which Faulkner was definitely non-committal. He said of Christmas' background, or lack of one:
I think that was his tragedy--he ...
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... Douglas Day. New York: Vintage, 1973.
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King, Richard B. A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Longley, John L., Jr. "Joe Christmas: The Hero in the Modern World." Faulkner: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Robert Penn Warren. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966: 163-174.
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Gordon S. Wood delves into Benjamin Franklin’s philosophical, political, and personal legacies in the biography, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. The book travels through Franklin’s experiments, his travels in Europe, and his role in the American revolution. The book begins when Franklin retires from business and becomes a gentleman. It was when he became a gentleman, it allowed him to analyze the world around him. “Indeed, he could not drink a cup of tea without wondering why the tea leaves at the bottom gathered in way rather than another,” a quote from Edmund S. Morgan’s book, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin spent a great deal of time in Britain before returning to America. When he returned, he threw himself into the American revolution, which sent him to France. After he accomplished his duties in France, he returned back home to America where he ran for public office.
16. James Hinkle and Robert McCoy, Reading Faulkner: The Unvanquished. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 141.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury: The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. Norton, 1994.
As a child, she considered herself as an equal to her brothers and was their playmate in the biruni. Furthermore, her father “had long entertained the highly unorthodox notion that education made women better wives.” Therefore he ensured that all his daughters received the a proper education, similar to their brothers, by attending school six days a week and being tutored in mathematics, reading and poetry. This was in addition to their traditional female education which included household management, sewing and religion. Essentially, the purpose of educating women was to prepare them to be better wives. Yet this education caused Sattarah to think independently and to challenge traditional values. Essentially, educating Satti, caused her to pave a life path of her own instead of conforming and getting an arranged marriage. It fuelled a desire to learn more and help others which ultimately led to her leaving Iran. However, her desire to “do something with my life” was met with an important obstacle. When Khanom mentioned Satti’s request to study abroad to her father, he refused by saying: “She is a woman. A woman will be nothing.” In his opinion, a zaifeh was incapable of living without the protection of a husband. Since her life was in the hands of her father, Sattarah was forced to comply with his demand to marry any man he chose for her. However, before he found her a
Lucas Beauchamp, found in Intruder in the Dust and Go Down, Moses, is one of William Faulkner's most psychologically well-rounded characters. He is endowed with both vices and virtues; his life is dotted with failures and successes; he is a character who is able to push the boundaries that the white South has enforced upon him without falling to a tragic ending. Living in a society which believes one drop of black blood makes a person less than human and implies criminal tendencies, a society in which men like Joe Christmas are hunted and killed for fear of racial mixing, Lucas is a character who contradicts all that we have come to expect from a typical tragic character of mixed blood, such as Joe Christmas or Charles Bon. By contrasting the Lucas Beauchamp we find in the "The Fire and the Hearth" section of Go Down, Moses to a model tragic figure such as Joe Christmas from Light in August, one can measure Lucas' success by his own merit, not by his white ancestry.
William Faulkner, an American author, wrote the novel, Light in August, in which Joe Christmas is at the center of the story. Joe Christmas is an orphan who is of biracial descent. At a young age, Christmas was adopted by a man named McEachern. When Christmas became older, he killed his father. From that point on, Christmas wandered about until he reached Jefferson, Mississippi where he fell in love with Joanna Burden, whom he also killed later on in the story. For this reason, along with numerous others, Christmas was lynched at the conclusion of this novel. William Faulkner carefully integrates several different ideas that can lead to a man’s solitude. According to the book William Faulkner by Harold Bloom, “…his fiction is steeped in the tones and emotions of the Deep South” (11). This holds true for Light in August since there is plenty of racism and hatred towards blacks. In William Faulkner’s novel, Light in August, Joe Christmas’s identity, psychological attitude, and resemblance to Christ are revealed through his isolation from society.
In the novel, A Light in August, William Faulkner introduces us to a wide range of characters of various backgrounds and personalities. Common to all of them is the fact that each is type cast into a certain role in the novel and in society. Lena is the poor, white trash southern girl who serves to weave the story together. Hightower is the fanatic preacher who is the dark, shameful secret of Jefferson. Joanna Burden is the middle-aged maiden from the north who is often accused of being a “nigger-lover”. And Joe Christmas is the epitome of an outsider. None of them are conventional, everyday people. They are all in some way disjointed from society; they do not fit in with the crowd. That is what makes them intriguing and that is why Faulkner documents their story.
Divorce is something that affects millions of Americans. When my grandmother got divorced, she was left with little money and no job. She was able to get a job and provide for herself, but with the poverty rates for divorced women being significantly higher than for divorced men, it is a problem in society (Gadalla, 2008). When women feel unable to provide for themselves, and in some cases their children as well, they will likely seek government benefits. This will inevitably cost the taxpayers money. A recent study of Texas showed that 13.8 billion dollars’ worth of government benefits a year was the result of poverty after a divorce (Schramm et al., 2013). It has been found that after a divorce, women are left as the main caregivers
Since this country was born it has been raised on alcohol, even the prohibition couldn 't stop the Americans from doing what they love to do. But back then they were lenient on the age to consume alcohol. But in 1980’s Ronald Reagan passed the Drinking Age Act which permanently raised the drinking age to twenty-one through out the nation. Which people asked themselves is this right? When at eighteen you 're legally allowed to be on a official jury, vote for the next president and fight for your country. So lowering the drinking age to 18 would make sense.
It is without question that Toula’s family is a patriarchy. Since her family is a traditional Greek family, it is apparent that her father Gus holds the power and it is the head of the family. (Luton, 2015) Throughout the film, the role of women is clearly shown starting at the beginning of the movie with Toula’s voice over monologue. According to her, “Nice Greek girls are supposed to do three things in life: marry Greek boys, make Greek babies, and feed everyone until the day we die.” (Zwick, 2002) Instantly, it is evident that Toula’s family has distinctive gender roles. These particular gender roles are immediately exemplified with Toula’s sister, Athena. She made quite few appearances in the movie, is married and also has three children. (Hill, 2013) Moreover, gender roles are also showed with Toula’s mother, Maria. She has three children with Gus and is constantly cleaning and cooking throughout the film. Whenever Toula asked permission for something, she invariably approached her father, as he holds the power in the family. For example, when she wanted to sign up for computer classes she asked for her father’s permission, not her mother. Also, when asking to take computer classes, Gus instantly had the mindset that women
In many of Faulkner’s stories, he tells about an imaginary county in Mississippi named Yoknapatawpha. He uses this county as the setting for his story “Barn Burning” and it is also thought that the town of Jefferson from “A Rose for Emily” is located in Yoknapatawpha County. The story of a boy’s struggle between being loyal to his family or to his community makes “Barn Burning” exciting and dramatic, but a sense of awkwardness and unpleasantness arrives from the story of how the fictional town of Jefferson discovers that its long time resident, Emily Grierson, has been sleeping with the corpse of her long-dead friend with whom she has had a relationship with.
On September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, a son was born to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Faulkner. This baby, born into a proud, genteel Southern family, would become a mischievous boy, an indifferent student, and drop out of school; yet “his mother’s faith in him was absolutely unshakable. When so many others easily and confidently pronounced her son a failure, she insisted that he was a genius and that the world would come to recognize that fact” (Zane). And she was right. Her son would become one of the most exalted American writers of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two Pulitzers during his lifetime. Her son was William Faulkner.
"William Faulkner (1897-1962)." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 97. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. 1-3. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Hempfield High School. 31 March 2010.
Religion is a big part of the southern world that Faulkner creates in Light In August. It is also a major theme of the novel. Most characters seem to use “Lord” and “God” very often in their dialogue, which shows that religion is never forgotten by the members of this society. Light in August portrays a type of religious fundamentalism. In this fundamentalism, among the people of the south, there is only one proper way of following and implementing religion in one’s life. Characters are constantly trying to justify killing, hatred, and racism through their faith. The creation of hatred and racism is the result of each character’s belief that theirs are the only genuine beliefs and therefore, it is their responsibility to carry out the work of God in their own personal way and through their own reasoning.