CHAPTER FOUR

ELEMENTS OF MODERNISM IN; , "LIGHT IN AUGUST" Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 140

4.0. Preliminaries

Light in August was the first book Faulkner published after gaining some public success with "Sanctuary". It continued and refined many of the themes that Faulkner had developed earlier in his career. After publishing, the novel suffered from the same critical response as did much of Faulkner's works. Scholars were split over Faulkner's literary merit; some praised him for his compelling vision and artistry while others condemned him for his obscurity and bleak vision of humanity.

With Malcolm Cowley's publication of The Portable Faulkner in

1946 and Faulkner's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949,

Faulkner's popularity increased, and scholars again found much to praise in his works. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Faulkner began to be regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important authors and Light in August as one of the best novels of the American

South.

Time magazine included Light in August in its "TIME 100 Best

English-language Novels" from 1923 to 2005. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 141

Light in August follows in the logical pattern set by Faulkner's two earlier novels, The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. The preceding novels dealt with man trying to find a meaningful relationship with the immediate family, and this one deals with man in relationship to the community and as an isolated being unable to communicate with his fellow man.

4.1. Plot Overview

Light In August tells many stories, but at its center are the story of

Joe Christmas , Lena Grove and the story of Reverend Gail

Hightowei^d.] Joe Christmas is an orphan who is convinced he is of biracial descent and has been tortured by this belief for his whole life.

He is adopted by a hard, Presbyterian man, McEachem, who beats any happiness or self-worth out of him, and after falling in love with a prostitute, whom McEachem scorns, he kills his adoptive father. His life from that point on is a continual journey. He moves from town to town and city to city, switching between living in white and black communities. He ends up in Jefferson, Mississippi, where he starts a complicated relationship with Joanna Burden, a white middle-aged Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 142 spinster who is completely ignored by the town because they consider her a Yankee. Joanna slowly changes from being obsessed with sex to being obsessed with religion, and tries to bring Christmas with her.

When Christmas will not follow Joanna on her path to spiritual salvation, she decides that they both must die. When she pulls out a gun, however, Christmas kills her and then bums down the house. The fire attracts the town's attention, and soon the Jefferson police are on

Christmas's tail, convinced of his guilt only because they are told he is partially black. The rest of Christmas's story is about his escape, capture and eventual killing.

Lena Grove is a young woman, more than seven months pregnant, who walks from Alabama to Mississippi in hopes of finding the father of her baby. Lucas Burch, after hearing that Lena is pregnant, leaves town quickly, telling her that he will send for her. When Lena's due date starts approaching, however, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She ends up in Jefferson, where Lucas has been living under the false name of Joe Brown and making money selling whisky with Joe

Christmas. With the help of Byron Bunch, who is in love with Lena, her Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 143 journey goes on. Bryon Bunch is a hardworking Christian who is distracted from his set ways for the first time by Lena's appearance.

Light In August interweaves another story into these two primary tales. Reverend Gail Hightower is the town pariah, obsessed with his family's past and determined to remove himself from life. In Light In

August, Faulkner offers readers a confluence of very different characters that together show the interconnectedness of the South.

4.2. Analysis of Light in August

The novel tells the interweaving stories of different characters all trying to make their way in the South. These characters inhabit

Jefferson, Mississippi, the central town in Faulkner's fictional

Yoknapatawpha County, the setting of many of his novels (and most of his greatest works). Each of these characters highlights one or more of

Faulkner's favorite themes. Joe Christmas faces a crisis of racial identity and finds sexualized women horrifying. Reverend Hightower is so obsessed with his family's past that he is barely alive, and Lena Grove is a fallen woman. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 144

While the themes are familiar, the characters are very different incarnations than those found in other Faulkner works. Unlike the characters in The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying, the characters in Light In August are not held together by familial relationships. This fact changes the tone of human interaction in the novel and extends the study of these interactions from the family unit to the community.

4.2.1. The Structure of the Novel

Light in August juxtaposes three different stories. The story of

Lena Grove begins and ends the novel. The story of Joe Christmas begins in the second chapter and ends in the third-to-last. The story of

Gail Hightower begins in the third chapter and ends in the next-to-last.

None of these stories proceeds chronologically. For example, one of the novel's climactic events, the murder of Joanna Burden, has already occurred before Lena Grove arriving in Jefferson at the end of Chapter

1, but we don't see Joe Christmas enter Joanna Burden's bedroom to kill her until the end of Chapter 12.

The primary problem posed by Light in Augusts structure is whether these three stories fuse into one unified novel. Remember that. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 145 except for the accident of all three characters being in Jefferson for the few days between Burden's murder and Christmas's death, their tales are indeed separate and distinct. Who is the central character? The middle, third and the largest section of the novel is about Christmas. But Lena opens and closes the novel. And Hightower is the character who ties the three stories together by officiating at the birth of Lena's baby and by trying to intervene against the killing of Joe.

Faulkner provides glimpses of Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower,

Joanna Burden, Percy Grimm, and Eupheus Hines in present time but then flashes back to important parts of their pasts that explain their behavior. Readers see the effect of the past most clearly in the character of Joe, who cannot escape the influence of his time in the orphanage or of his life with the McEachems. His experiences during these two periods shape his character and move him toward his tragic destiny.

Gail Hightower is also negatively affected by the past as he endlessly relives the glory of his grandfather's cavalry charge. This obsession prevents him from living in the present, effectively destroying his marriage and eventually his reputation and branding him an outcast. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August ^46

Joanna Burden's upbringing in a rigid Calvinist environment influences her relationship with Joe and uhimately leads to her murder.

The stories of two main characters, Lena and Byron, however, are not told through flashbacks, except for Lena's very brief one that names

Brown as the baby's father and notes her departure from her hometown.

B. R. McElderry Jr., in his article on the novel's narrative structure in

College English, insists: "It is important that the Lena-Byron story is told in chronological sequence, just as it developed. This is the simple narrative thread that gives a recurrent sense of forward motion." The two main story lines of the novel, involving Lena and Byron and Joe and Joanna, fuse when Lena appears at the top of the hill overlooking

Jefferson and watches Joanna's house bum. Lena and Byron escape from the destruction symbolized by that fire, while Joe and Joanna are consumed by it.

The first chapter of the book takes place in the middle of the whole story, but the last chapter actually takes place at the ending.

Also, chapters following one another often have no connection to each other, unless the same characters are in them. When Faulkner does this. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 147

\- :

it stresses what was important in one chapter and the next important

issue in the following chapter, and he often does it through the use of

flashbacks and foreshadowing. When Christmas and Brown share a

cabin, Joe thinks "Something is going to happen to me. I am going to do

something"(Light in August, p. 104)

However, the audience already knows from the previous chapter

that what he thinks he's going to do is kill somebody, and that it has

already happened. By letting his audiences know this has happened

before it gets explained, helps to explain the nature of Joe. In many

works of literature, before a character does something the audience

discovers their intentions. In Faulkner's case however, the reader knows

what a character has done, then goes back to before it happened to

explain their every thought. By doing this, the reader can find it easier

to understand their actions, based on how the characters were feeling, or

how the event tied into their history.

After the audience finds out about Ms. Burden's death in

chapters four and five, Faulkner then goes back twenty five years to talk

about how Joe Christmas was brought up in chapters six through twelve. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 148

leading straight into him killing Ms. Burden. By choosing to set up the

chapters in this way, the reader gets even more insight on why Joe

Christmas felt he had to do what he did, as well as his own history,

which also supports his actions. The reader finds out about his

confusion with identity, his hatred of religion, and his problem with women. When Bobbie leaves Joe in chapter nine and Joe thinks: "Why,

I committed murder for her. I even stole for her"(p.217), the reader can assume that part of his reason for killing Ms. Burden was caused by the way Bobbie left him.

The choice to not explain Hightower's obsession with his grandfather until the end of the book affects the way the reader views him as he is near death. Although it is mentioned early in chapter three:

"But they could not tell whether he himself believed or not what he told them, if he cared or not, with his religion and his grandfather being shot from the galloping horse all mixed up, as though the seed which his grandfather had transmitted to him had been on that horse too... "(p.64)

It is difficult to understand, as Hightower thinks about it, near his death, his grandfather's history finally seems to be important, as it is Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 149

explained. As Faulkner develops the effect Reverend Hightower's

heritage had on him, the reader understands why it is not added until the

book's end. If his grandfather would have been discussed before his

death, the importance would have been lost, especially when he passes

away,

"...it seems to him that he still hears them, the wild bugles and the

clashing sabers and the dying thunder of hooves" (p. 39 3).

The characters of the novel contrast with each other in illuminating

ways. But a comparison may not be enough to make a unified structure.

Some readers have felt that the novel's unity comes from elements other than the structure, for example, from the imagery or from the themes.

Others say that Faulkner unified the novel by making Lena's story encompass Christmas's. They point out that she opens and closes Light

in August as a way of placing Joe Christmas's individual tragedy in the broad context of ordinary and reasonably happy people like Lena Grove and Byron Bunch. And still others argue that Faulkner deliberately left his novel loose and open as a way of presenting a truer picture of the Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 150 stream of life than if he had encased his characters in a more classically

"artistic" form.

4.2.2. Style in Light In August

The following complicated sentence has been taken from the opening page of chapter 6 of the novel.

Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by a ten foot steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but in knowing constant as the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like blacktears. (Chapter 6, opening paragraph)

As it is obvious, Faulkner's style may give the reader trouble at first because of (1) his use of long, convoluted, and sometimes Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 151 ungrammatical sentences, such as the one just quoted; (2) his repetitiveness (for example, the word "bleak" in the above sentence); and (3) his use of oxymorons, that is, combinations of contradictory or incongruous words (for example, "frictionsmooth," "slow and ponderous gallop," "cheerful, testy voice"). People who dislike Faulkner see this style as careless. Yet Faulkner rewrote and revised Light in

August many times to get the final book exactly the way he wanted it.

His style is a product of thoughtful deliberation, not of haste.

Some critics say that Faulkner likes to force readers to absorb many contradictory feelings all at once. He wants you to see the meaningful connections between large varieties of human experiences.

Faulkner himself once said that he wanted to put the entire "world" on a

"pinhead." Looked at this way, his all-encompassing sentences create a style appropriate for a novel with three different plots and a variety of seemingly unrelated characters. And Faulkner's use of oxymorons may create a tension that mirrors his characters' and his region's often unresolved conflicts. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 152

In addition, regarding the story telling in Liglrt^ in August, the reader is hearing a story second-hand or third-hand. In this case, Byron is telling about things that the countryman and Brown told the sheriff.

The reader doesn't know whom Byron heard the story from, and much of what Brown is reported as saying is only what he in turn heard from

Christmas. Why does Faulkner use this method? One possible reason is that this storytelling takes some of reader's attention away from the often gruesome events and makes the reader think more about the various characters who are speaking. This method also contrasts public perceptions of events with a truer picture that Faulkner may not reveal until later.

4.3. Elements of Modernism in Light in August

In Light in August, the connections between the characters are not immediately clear, and the novel meanders structurally through each of the stories with considerable complexity. This is the main modernist feature of "Light in August". There is also complexity in the tone of the novel, which varies dramatically from the rather comic romance Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 153 between Lena Grove and Byron Bunch to the tragic, violent, and deeply disturbing story of Joe Christmas.

Furthermore, the modernist elements such as stream-of- consciousness, multiple point of narrative views and voices, convolution of time sequences, symbolism etc., can be found in the novel to represent it as a modernist novel.

4.3.1. Stream-of-Consciousness

Influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud, modernists pondered the psychology of their characters, often articulating both subconscious and conscious motivations. To accurately reflect these levels of consciousness, modernists employed stream-of-consciousness narratives

(a way of telling a story by presenting the associative sequence of thought in consciousness) and replaced traditional omniscient narrators with subjective points of view that allowed often a narrow and distorted or multiple vision of reality. The most extreme versions of this device give the reader direct access to the ftill contents of the characters' minds, however those contents may be confiised, fragmented, and even contradictory. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 154

As a modernist writer, Faulkner is using the technique of stream- of-consciousness, in his novel. But Faulkner develops his own, more structured variety of stream of consciousness. In his densest paragraphs, he often lets his characters fall into reveries in which they perceive more deeply than their conscious minds possibly could. His characters connect past and present and reflect on the meaning of events and on the relationships between them in a manner that sounds more like Faulkner himself than like the characters in their usual states of mind. For example, in the opening of chapter 6, quoted earlier, Joe Christmas is entering into memory after he has killed Joanna Burden. He is just beginning to sort things out, and the free-flowing, emotionally charged jumble of images suggests the workings of his unconscious mind. But

Faulkner also uses words and makes observations more sophisticated than you would usually expect fi-omJo e Christmas. This combination is a part of what makes his style unique.

Of course, for characters' conscious thoughts, Faulkner uses the style they would use when they are speaking, and in such passages he puts the thought inside single quotation marks or in italics. For example, in the novel's opening paragraph, Lena thinks: Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 155

"I have come from Alabama: a fiir piece. All the way from

Alabama a-walking. A fiir piece. " (p.l)

The single quote seems to indicate thoughts formulated in words.

As in the passage that follows the sentences just quoted, it often seems to suggest thoughts not quite so explicitly verbalized. It also notes

Faulkner's ability to use brief passages of dialogue to make a large variety of Southern characters come to life as individuals.

Nearly every character in the novel demonstrates stream-of- consciousness, with many examples presented in Joe Christmas to show the origins of his actions, and to help the reader step into his shoes and comprehend his inner psyche. Frequently throughout the book, Joe contemplates how long he has traveled to get where he is. After stopping at a negro cabin to ask the day of the week, he ponders over the fact that they could have turned him in, thinking: "Yes I would say here I am I am tired of running of having to carry my life like it was a basket of eggs" (p. 3 37).

Joe is exhausted from all the escaping caused by his own trouble, and the escaping he has been forced to do. His history with problems Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 156 concerning his race has led into all of this running, and also had an influence on his decisions. He is constantly frustrated from feeling like he has to walk on the edge around white and black people both, which causes some of his anger.

Stream-of-consciousness also assists the reader in making a connection between Joe's determination and his history. After seeing

Mottstown, he thinks:

"And yet I have been further in these seven days than in all the thirty years,...'But I have never got outside that circle. I have never broken out of the rings of what I have already done and cannot ever undo"(p.l28).

Joe's circle is his history. It begins when he is originally ridiculed at his orphanage for appearing to have black heritage, and ends at his death when he passively lets a racist man kill him. What has happened in the past influences the present, because Joe is still attempting to evade his problems. He openly admits that he cannot undo what he has done, which causes a weakness in him, and affects his moral decisions.

Seeing Ms. Burden as a threat, he just gave in and killed her because he Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in Aiigust 157 felt that was what he had to do, based on what he had done in other similar situations.

4.3.2. Multiplicity of Point of Views and Voices

One prominent feature of Faulkner's fiction is to bring into juxtaposition multiple points of view within the same tale. He makes a different use of several character-narrators who tell the story from their particular standpoints, according to their own interests and bias. It is

Faulkner's interest to confront the reader with a series of changing view points of the narrators who in reporting and sometimes evaluating the same set of events are showing widely different reactions to them. In this respect, the reader witnesses the same incidents several times from several points of view.

Most often, the narrator's own experiences and obsessions affect their narrations that are consequently mixed with a general deal of imaginative recreations or the memories of their own past exfracting the hidden meaning. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 158

Long after publication of Light in August, in answer to a student's question regarding the arrangement of narrative episodes in Light in

August, Faulkner replied, "It may be this. Unless a book follows a simple direct line such as a story of adventure, it becomes a series of pieces. It's a good deal like dressing a showcase window. It takes a certain amount of judgment and taste to arrange the different pieces in the most effective place in juxtaposition to one another." (Faulkner in the University, 45)

Faulkner's answer is decidedly visual, spatial and, in these terms,

^•^ literate. It would seem that he did not think of some^his novels especially in terms of the line of the story, but in terms of narrative threads or blocks that must be arranged.In fact, Faulkner was so incorrigibly creative that a major episode in his work may be told two or three times and be presented in a different version in each.

In this way , Faulkner's reader is given the opportunity to take an active role in the course of the story that is revealed by a compilation of sensitive voices who are directly or indirectly involved in the novel. In other words, the reader and the author, who are concealed themselves behind materials, take part in a game of imaginations. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 159

Generally, the narrator in third-person novels is omniscient (all- knowing) and objective. In others it takes the point of view of the central character. In Light in August the narrator is often objective. But what is unusual about this novel is the way in which the narrator's point of view shifts fi-equently fi"om one character to another. And even when reporting fi-om the point of view of one character alone, the narrator sometimes stays on the surface of that character's speech and thoughts; while at other times he has access to memories so deep that the character himself may not be consciously aware of them.

The difference between this shifting point of view and the point of view of an omniscient narrator is important. For example, you first hear of Joe Christmas from Byron's point of view, Byron seems a sympathetic character, so you tend to accept what he says. Later you see

Joe Christmas from his own point of view but without access to his deepest thoughts and feelings. When (in Chapter 6) the narrator finally dives into Joe's buried memories, you get a completely different picture of him. But in Chapter 19 you see his final escape and murder fi-omth e point of view of Percy Grimm. One of Faulkner's purposes in this approach is to contrast public images with private realities. The Joe Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 160

Christmas that the town of Jefferson knows is different from the Joe

Christmas seen from within, and Faulkner's shifting point of view keeps you aware of that and other such contrasts.

Occasionally, one of Light in Augusts characters tells his story in the first person, for example, the furniture dealer in Chapter 21. But in this novel first-person narration is always addressed to one of the other characters and never directly to the reader. In evaluating whatever material a character presents this way, you must consider not only the speaker but also his audience.

4.3.3. Disruption of chronological Order in the Novel

Modernists experimented with different narrative styles to convey their themes. They abandoned traditional notions of narrative structure that suggest that stories have a specific beginning, middle, and end.

Instead, they often started their stories in the middle, jumped back and forth in time, and left their endings ambiguous, suggesting that this structure more closely resembles reality. They felt that human interaction rarely started at the beginning of the story and rarely achieved closure at the ending of the story. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 161

In a modernist work, the events in the plot of the novel are not presented in chronological order. Many of the characters are glimpsed through extended flashbacks, which disrupt the sequential order of events. This is true of Light in August.

There are, as Meats points out, three distinct (though broad) stages of time in Light in August: the present (associated with Lena Grove and

Byron Bunch); the immediate past (associated with Joe Christmas and

Joanna Burden); and the remote past (associated with Joe Christmas,

Joanna Burden, and Gail Hightower). The first half of the novel is mostly taken up with the remote past, while the second half of the novel is set primarily in the present. Events of the immediate past (the least represented of the three stages) cluster in the middle of the book.

Though there are exceptions, an organizing principle seems to lurk just below the ambiguous surface of the work.

The stable order of Light in August, shifting in time, must first be unpacked before considering how the order suggested by those shifts can be confirmed. Looking at the order of the chapters as published and comparing broad shifts in narrative time reveals an underlying pattern.

Not only time shifts but the grouping of chapters in terms of their Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 162 relation to the frame also illustrate how Light in August is structured.

These broad shifts in time are associated with the two narrative threads in Light in August: one associated with Lena Grove, the other with Joe

Christmas. There are other shifts besides those indicated above. In

Chapter 15, for instance, there is a brief narrative description of Doc

Hines' arrival in Mottstown years before Joe Christmas arrives and is arrested there. The diagram is meant to illustrate a pattern as associated with the major characters in the two narrative threads.

Richardson (1997) has mapped these relations in terms of the shifts in narrative time in the following diagram: Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 163

(7) (3) (7)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

p p p P-_..i „P p p

II I I I

R R R R

Order of chapters and shifts in narrative time in Light in August.

In the above diagrammatic map, the numerals refer to chapter number, "R" stands for remote past; "I" stands for immediate past; "P" stands for present. The parenthetical numbers (7, 3, and 7) that appear above the chapter designations serve as an indication of a grouping.

Lena Grove's presence defines the outer edges of the novel, its beginning and end, and is intimately involved with the novel's third Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 164 boundary, Joanna Burden's death, at the center. The novel's second narrative/temporal boundary is taken up with the immediate past and is associated with Joe Christmas' story.

In terms of the order of the chapters in Light in August, Chapters

1,2, 4, 13 to 19, 20 and 21 all contain significant elements in the present action of the novel and are associated especially with Lena Grove and

Byron Bunch, (though they are also necessarily connected to Joe

Christmas and Gail Hightower through Lena's relationship with Byron

Bimch). Chapters 3, 6 to 9, 11, and 20 all contain significant elements fi-om the remote past as related especially to Joe Christmas, Joanna

Burden, and Gail Hightower. These, in turn, associatively, connect to

Lena Grove's narrative thread through Byron Bunches association with her. Chapters 2, 5, 10, 11, and 12, are dominated by action of the immediate past and so are associated with Joe Christmas and Joanna

Burden. These episodes, which cluster in the first half of the novel, are not tied to the novel's other major thread—Lena Grove's story—^until after the revelation of the meaning of the smoke rising on the horizon that Lena sees at the beginning of the novel as she arrives, finally, in

Jefferson, Mississippi. As can be seen, a little over half of the novel Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 165

(twelve chapters) is given over to the Lena Grove/Byron Bunch narrative, while the other half is split evenly between immediate past and remote past (which appear in five chapters apiece). But because some temporal modes overlap, the novel suggests a connection between the two characters' narrative threads in the scene in which Lena arrives in Jefferson at the beginning of the novel, and sees the smoke rising in the distance. Faulkner seems here to link symbolically the beginning of the end of Lena's journey toward the resolution of her problem with the ending of Joanna Burden.

These shifts, within chapters do not correspond uniformly with the number of chapters in the book.

There are three chapters in the novel that contain events from two of the major phases of time; 2, 11, and 20, Chapter 2 contains elements of the immediate past and the present; chapter 11 includes the immediate and remote past; and chapter 20 includes episodes from the remote past and the present. As will be illustrated, these chapters form the basis of the overall structure of the novel, especially in terms of the associations they have with specific characters as well as with the associations those characters have with orality and literacy. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 166

A description of the movement of the novel's narrative exposition, as unfolded in terms of the horizontal arrangement of narrative blocks of material, reveals how the pattern articulates itself within a literary text. The novel begins in Lena's present, and then moves to a chapter containing elements of the present and the immediate past. The text then devotes an entire chapter to the remote past, leaps back to the present, then to the immediate past. In the following (chapters 6 to 9) narrative is concerned with the remote past. Chapter 10 brings us back to the action immediately preceding Joanna Burden's death. The middle chapter, which contains but does not literally reveal that murder, also contains information from the remote past and is followed by a chapter that details Joe's actions immediately following Burden's murder. Then the novel comes back to the present and remains with Lena and Byron from chapter 13 to 19. Chapter 20 combines the present with Gail

Hightower's remote past, and Chapter 21 ends where the novel began, in the present.

The temporal boundaries in Light in August must be understood to be triangular, rather than binary. And it may be observed that these three chapters (10, 11, and 12) which entirely contain the Joe Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 167

Christmas/Joanna Burden affair are preceded and followed by an equal

number of chapters (seven chapters), that themselves are divisors of the

total number of chapters in the novel.

Furthermore, these chapters compliment each other through the

associations they have with the specific characters whose stories form

their narration.

The initial symbolic connection between the pregnant Lena Grove

and the dead Joarma Burden is suggestive of the way that the dual

stories in Light in August are interwoven. As the diagram illustrates, the

narrative structure of the novel is most problematized in the first half, with its many shifts between all three temporal modes. After chapter 12, however, the narrative structure becomes largely straightened out.

Disruption of chronological order existing all over the novel

conveys to what extent the past is present in and continues to affect the characters' lives. Most of the characters are revealed through flashback or stories they tell about their past and about their ancestors' lives. This structure emphasizes the point that the current state of affairs is shaped by past events, and it highlights the novel's insistence on determinism- a philosophy that asserts that acts that appear to be freely chosen are Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 168

actually determined by forces that lie beyond the individual's control-

such as the will of God or natural or social laws.

Even though Faulkner's style of writing can be confusing at

times, it is one that can never be copied precisely, and keeps the reader's

attention. His vivid use of destruction of chronology implies the

importance of his characters and their histories. Although it may not

seem so at the time, each character is worked on carefully to explain

themselves, which is one of the factors that makes the reading of

Faulkner's books so enjoyable for his audience.

4.3.4. Uncertainty and Identity Crisis in the novel

American literature written in the 1920s and early 1930s was

dominated by a group of writers who were disillusioned by World War I

(1914 - 1918). This group, which would come to be known as the modernists, reflected the Zeitgeist, or spirit of their age - a time when, in the aftermath of war, many Americans had lost faith in traditional

institutions such as the government, social institutions, established religions, and even in humanity itself. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 1S9

At that time, Modernism became one of the most fruitful periods in

American letters. Modernist authors such as Ernest Hemingway, F.

Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos became part of what Gertrude

Stein called the "Lost Generation", creative people who witnessed the horrors of war and who struggled to survive despite having lost their values and ideals. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties, or the Jazz Age as

F. Scott Fitzgerald called this period, was reflected in Modernist themes. On the surface, the characters in many of these works lived in the rarified atmosphere of the upper class. They drank, partied, and had sexual adventures, but underneath the glamorous surface, they persisted a sense of the meaninglessness at the heart of their existence. Other modernists such as William Faulkner and playwright Eugene O'Neill focused on lower-class Americans whose sense of meaninglessness was compounded by their economic limitations.

Each modernist writer focused on separate ways to cope with the loss: some characters tried to drown a sense of emptiness in the fast- paced, alcohol-steeped life of the 1920s; some tried to overcome a profound sense of isolation through relationships; and some attempted to overcome meaninglessness through personal acts of courage. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 170

Hemingway's men and women faced a meaningless world with courage

and dignity, exhibiting grace under pressure, while Fitzgerald's sought

the redemptive power of love in a world driven by materialism.

Faulkner's characters tried to establish a sense of identity as well as ties

to family, all pressed by the social burden of Southern history.

In this novel also, Joe Christmas does not know who he is. His

uncertain racial identity affects every aspect of his life. Sometimes he

claims to be white, sometimes black, but he rebels against both

categories. Christmas roams the North and the South, the cities and the

countryside, without ever settling into a fixed home or a long-lasting human relationship. By contrast, Lena Grove never doubts her identity.

Even when wandering alone among strangers, she is confident of her purpose, her destination, and even of her relationship with the shiftless

Lucas Burch. She reveals a moment of doubt only when old Mrs. Hines confiises Lena's baby with Joe Christmas. Gail Hightower and Joanna

Burden are neither as sure of their identities as Lena, nor as doubtful as

Joe. Joaima is a Northern abolitionist who feels homesick whenever she leaves Jefferson, Mississippi. For two years she is cool and rational by day, while wildly passionate by night. Then she veers from the extremes Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 171

of sensuality to those of self-denial. On the other hand, Hightower

wants to do good in the world, while he also wants to ignore the world

and to live in solitude. He lives in the pa^ but often seems acutely

concerned about the events of the present.

4.3.5. Blurring of Distinction between Comedy and

Tragedy

B. R. McElderry Jr, in his "College English" article on the novel's

narrative structure, writes, "it is doubtfiil if any of the [other major -•A

novels] combines so richly the easy natural comedy and the violent tragedy of which Faulkner at his best is a master."

Just as Faulkner maintained that The Sound and the Fury began with a single image, he said that the idea for Light in August began with

a vision of Lena Grove walking, pregnant, along a country road. In

"Faulkner and the University", Faulkner remarks:

"That story began with Lena Grove, the idea of the young girl with nothing, pregnant, determined to find her sweetheart. . .. As I told that story, I had to get more and more into it. But that was mainly the story of Lena Grove" (p. 74). Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 172

The form of Light in August is both tragic and comic: the content

both existential and mythic. And as Faulkner got "more and more into

it," of course, he found that comic story was somehow connected to the

tragic story of Joe Christmas.

Tragedy always concerns itself with the individual, his values, his

tragic encounter with the reality about him, and the waste which is

suffered in his defeat. Comedy involves, on the other hand, the author's

basic alignment with society and with the community. According to

Cleanth Brooks (1963) "We may say that Faulkner tends to take the

long view in which the human enterprise in all its basically vital

manifestations is seen from far off and with great detachment. If the

view is long enough and the perspective full enough, the basic attitude

is almost inevitably comic." (p.84)

Here, James Joyce's Ulysses comes to mind. Though it has much pathos and horror in it, is also finally a comic work. In Light in August

Faulkner observes even the tragic events that involve Joe Christmas and

Joanna Burden with detachment and in a full perspective. Joe Christmas faces the problem of twentieth century man trying to be human in a Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 173

chaotic and hostile world. However, it is Lena and her instinct for

nature, Lena and her rapport with the community, Lena as a link in the

eternal progression from mother to daughter who provides the final

norm for our judgment. In this connection Faulkner's abiding concern

with man's endurance and his ability to suffer anything—compare the

Nobel Prize speech—is worth remembering. In fact, Faulkner in his

novel has broken the boundaries between tragedy and comedy,

presenting a combination of them in Light in August.

4.3.6. Symbolism in the Novel

Faulkner uses symbolism throughout the entire novel. Ms. Burden

is kind enough to house Joe on her own property, but she does it in an

old slave cabin. The cabin historically symbolizes the division between

slaves and their masters, which is not healthy for Joe, because of his problems with authority and racial identity. It makes Joe feel inferior to

her, like he is an intruder, and gives him the urge to rape her. Also,

Joanna acts like she is better than him when she leaves food out for him as if he is an animal, and continues to leave the door unlocked even Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 174 though he raped her. The door being left unlocked only makes him angrier,

"He was not yet raging. He went to the kitchen door...When he found that it was not locked it was like an insult. It was as though some enemy upon whom he had wreaked his utmost of violence and contumely stood, unscathed and unscarred, and contemplated him with a musing and insufferable contempt"(p.237).

Her action of leaving the door unlocked shows her contempt, causing him to be more violent and dangerous, and symbolizes her superior feelings towards him. To Joe, brushing aside his attempts to make someone fearful of him is a major insult which explains his actions towards Joanna.

In Joe's final moment with Joanna, she pulls out an old Civil

War gun, with which she plans on killing both of them. It is described as: "It held an old style, single action, cap-and-ball revolver almost as long and heavier than a small rifle"(p.282). Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 175

The fact that she wants to end his life with this gun furthermore

symbolizes her feelings of superiority towards him and touches again on

his problems with identity. It is ironic when Joanna who has always

accepted black people in her home, tries to kill a black man with a gun

made for the war over slavery. Faulkner's decision to make the gun

historically linked to the civil war shows the importance of history to

Joanna and Joe, as well as it shows how their history with one another

affected them both.

In addition, when Joe is stopped at the same negro cabin of the

family that did not turn him in, he traded his shoes for a pair of black

ones. He then uses them throughout the rest of his journey away from

Jefferson, letting them wear out. They are described as:

"...the black shoes smelling of negro: that mark on his ankles the gauge definite and ineradicable of the black tide creeping up his legs,

moving from his feet as death moves" (p. 3 39).

The closer and closer Joe comes to getting caught, more of his leg gets dyed black, and as time goes by, people hate him more and more for being part black. The shoes symbolize him entering the identity of a Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 176 black person. They symbolize all black people and how they were mistreated due to slavery in the past.

4.4. Conclusion

Light in August is probably Faulkner's most complex and difficult novel. Here, he combined numerous themes on a large canvas where many aspects of life are vividly portrayed. The publication of this novel marked the end of Faulkner's greatest creative period~in four years he had published five substantial novels and numerous short stories. Light in August is the culmination of this creative period and is the novel in which Faulkner combines many of his previous themes with newer insights into human nature.

In The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying, Faulkner had examined the relationship of the individual to his family. In his next major novel, Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner returned to the family as the point of departure for his story. In Light in August, the family as a unit is replaced by the community, which although not examined as the family in other novels, serves as the point of departure. Chapter Four: Elements of Modernism in Light in August 177

The novel may be interpreted on many levels. It suggests such themes as man's isolation in the modem world, man's responsibility to the community and contains the features such as stream of consciousness, multiple points of view and disjointed time lines, presenting it as a modernist novel. Each of these features can be adequately supported, but none seems to present the whole intent of the novel. Perhaps this is because the complexity of the novel yields to no single interpretation but seems to require a multiple approach.