zBlogging the Literary Life - AP College English

Faulkner's Wife was Really Helpful

The prompt from the King Lear essay about titles and their relationship to the story got me thinking about A Light in August.  I did a little searching and found out some interesting stuff.  So the most obvious reason for the title is the light that lights up Mississippi in August.  One article said that the light spoken of seems to be coming from the past.  Maybe if that's true then it is hinting at all of the character's back stories coming into play later on in their life like Hightower.  It also said that Faulkner's wife gave him the idea.  He was originaly going to call it Dark House, but one day his wife was talking about the pretty light in August and he wrote down the name immediately.  Even more interesting, though, was the other meaning for light.  Apparently, at the time the novel was written, the word "light" was  slang for pregnant.  Faulkner could quite literally have been referring to Lena's pregnancy in the month of August.  There's a lot of interesting stuff out there on the title, pretty cool.

Christmas' Violence

I do not know about the rest of you.  But I do not understand why Christmans hits the girl in the shed.  It could be a reaction against using a black girl that way.  If so that reactions could be caused by his belief that he has black blood in him which could affect how he would view the situation.  He may have sympathy for the black girl (although I do not see that) or he could just feel too close to being a black person by being with a black girl.  A reaction based on the morality that is beaten into him is possible but considering his later actions with the waitress unlikely.  If anyone can shed some light on this event it would help me quite a bit.

Rolereversing

I found it very interesting how Faulkner plays with role reversal on pages 210 and 211. Joe keeps whipping the exhausted horse's rump with a broom handle, as if he can force the horse to speed up. But it doesn't affect the horse at all. Even when Joe gets off and pulls the horse, he cannot grudge the horse, and he realizes that his whipping is useless because the horse doesn't even seem to feel it.

This is just like the whipping episodes Joe had with Mr. McEachern when he was a boy. McEachern thought that whipping Joe regularly could force him to memorize the catechism. But Joe just didn't care, to the point that he didn't even register the pain of being whipped. He was used to it.

Now that Joe has killed/injured McEachern, he seems to be assuming his role and putting the horse in his old position. Faulkner even says they are "facing each other," just like Joe and McEachern faced each other when they disputed over the heifer. Then Joe runs "completely out of the life of the horse as if it had never existed." This implies that McEachern (if he survived) will do the same: he will forget about Joe to move on and protect his pride.

Characters' Names

In Chapter 1 (I think), Faulkner writes a line about peoples' names and how they actually stood for more than something you call someone by. He seems to put a lot of importance on the names of characters throughout the book. I was wondering what everyone thought was the importance of the characters' names. Joe Christmas is an interesting one. The events that happen to him throughout the book give the exact opposite of the happiness Christmas brings. I was interested as to why his name is Christmas--irony, maybe--and if there is any significance as to why both he and Joe Brown go by Joe.

Who Is A Reliable Source?

In Faulkner's Light In August, as has been previously discussed, we see a modernist approach taken.  The text does not always flow in a conventional, linear pattern.  In writing the book, Faulkner tested boundaries and helped open the door for a new kind of literature; one that does not necessarily follow "the rules".  As the reader flips through page by page, the text is very segmented and the narrator changes often.  What I began to think about as I was reading was that the points of view that each scene takes place in are not necessarily reliable sources.  In Chapter 3, for example, as Byron tells Hawthorne's story, he is only speaking on what he has heard and seen in the town.  Some of what he states might just be speculation.  I would be interested to see if anyone else was skeptical of the narrator's validity at any other point in the book.  Do you think that it is of the nature of a modernist to portray points of view that's truth may be sketchy?  On the contrary, is this just a writing style that Faulkner created or even did not intend to create?

Personal Feelings

I'm interested as to what others feel about Light in August so far. I find parts of the story sort of dragged on, but others very stimulating. I think it is interesting that certain chapters stand out to me, and others confuse me and therefore i kind of push them aside (such as the Mrs. Hightower chapter). What are your favorite parts in the book so far, and why?

Memories

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." 

I think this quote is really important to the novel since so much of it is written in memories rather than in the present.  Faulkner's characters are constantly taking us back to the past to memories that have changed their entire lives.  For example Joe recalls the day when he sneaks into the dietician’s room to steal a small amount of toothpaste.  Although this was nothing big at the time, it ended up changing his entire life.  Faulkner shows that one seemingly insignificant moment can alter our lives completely.

4shadowing

I noticed in Faulkner's style is the extensive use f foreshadowing. His writing is full of unclear statements and sometimes he elaborates on minor details then mentions something important that simply ends the sentence and leaves you wondering what effect this is going to have on later developments of characters. I think this is also helpful because it attracts the readers attention to important details about each characters that might come into play later in the novel since this is a long book (507 pages) and it is easy to forget seemingly minor details if they popped up again. Did anyone notice that?

Faulkner's Mosaic

I've been thinking about how each chapter has a very different narrative structure, voice, etc.  Why do you think Faulkner does this?  Faulkner's objective is seemingly to create a story told through a community of closly nit citizens.  It no longer becomes one person subjectively telling a story.  The amount of characters involved and the amount of perspectives used gives the sense that this really happened.  To me, as we progress through the novel, the fact that every character is represented and goes through personal turmoil, I get the feeling that there is something horrifying about to happen -- there is an ominous tone to it.  It's tough to place, but if any of you have seen Magnolia maybe you know what I'm talking about.  Is anyone else getting this feeling?

Brown vs. Board of Honesty

After reading up to page 92, I dramatically wrote at the top of the page, "BROWN KILLED HER."  I still believe that Brown, not Christmas, is the one who killed Miss Burden.  When Brown is being interrogated, he is caught lying several times.  He says that the fire started at 8:00 even though the first time it was spotted was 11:00.  Brown never explained this inconsistency and he just continued to speak louder and faster, another sign of a liar. Then the sheriff brings up Joe's attempt to stop Hamp from finding Miss Burden: "'And that that man tried to keep him from going up the stairs.' And him setting there in the center of them, with his eyes going and going" (97). 
After this, Joe never explains why he tried to stop Hamp but he merely pulls out the race card.  If the sheriff had not fallen for Brown's warnings that they ought not to "accuse the white man and let the nigger go free," they might have punished the real killer: Joe Brown.
Maybe I misread the book, but I never read a line confirming Christmas's guilt, and Joe Brown's word is worth its weight in fool's gold.