Following the fierce experimentation of the previous two novels we read, it is interesting to see which of Faulkner’s techniques remain  unalloyed and which  are diminished in Light in August, in which we can almost feel Faulkner eyeballing Hollywood . I was interested in one of the constants across all the novels we’ve read so far, however, and it is this idea that names are important. In particular I was interested in what nameplay in Light suggests about personhood.

We enter the story because of a case of mistaken names: Lena Grove travels to Jefferson in search of Lucas Burch, where she is instead greeted by a man named Bunch – and a Burch who has changed his name to Brown. Entering the scene, Lena’s face “is already shaped upon a name.” (50) While the Burch-Bunch mixup registers as comedic, like something out of a Shakespearean comedy, there are several hints that something much deeper is at work here. Here’s Burch:

“Two fells named Joe that live out that way somewhere. Joe Christmas and Joe Brown.”

“Joe Christmas? That’s a funny name.” [Lena says]

“He’s a funny fellow.” Again he looks a little aside from her interested face. “His partner’s a sight, too. Brown. He used to work here too. But they done quit now, both of them. Which ain’t nobody’s loss, I reckon.” (53)

This passage offers many ways to look at how Faulkner plays with names here. First, there is the suggestion that Christmas’ funny name can tell us something about his personality; i.e., that his funny name may somehow make him funny. In the novel’s world, names accurately depict personality. By this point in the novel it is also somewhat obvious that one of these men is the real Burch (not to be compared with Bunch) whom Lena is seeking, and the doubling of both the Joes and the Burches creates a kind of shell game. We might think of Lena’s pregnant belly as a version of Chekhov’s proverbial loaded gun in that it is a dangling problem that suggests a dramatic resolution: among Bunch and the two Joes, one of these guys is going to have to step up and be father of this child, and husband to its mother. Meanwhile, neither of the two Joes go by their real name, which is used to highlight how each is something of a shapeshifter. At the sawmill, Bunch notes that Brown/Burch has a “mobile face,” which is “so scattered and so lightly built that it wasn’t any trouble for even him to change it.” (45)  As for Christmas, his life in the first eight chapters is presented as a similarly shapeshifting quest to preserve the secret of his Black heritage; indeed, after being christened a McEachern, he begins to display “kinship of stubbornness like a transmitted resemblance” with his adoptive father; together they are “more alike than actual blood could have made them.” (148)

Yet it seems important to note that these three qualities of names – accuracy, malleability, fungibility – exist in tension with one another, at least if one is to believe there is such a thing as an essential “self.” After all, if people’s names determine their actions, and their names can be changed or even swapped, can there be said to exist a stable self? The trials of Hightower and Lena suggest that shame piles up on unchanged names. After losing the church, Hightower places in a sign in his lawn advertising various services, the fallen reverend’s name reading “Gail Hightower D.D.” Byron recalls first moving to town and wondering what the two D’s stand for, and is told “Done Damned. Gail Hightower Done Damned in Jefferson anyway, they told him.” (58-59) So too with the unwed mother Lena, whose physical state displays a shame confirmed by her lack of a married name. As her conversation with Mrs. Armstid runs: “I told you false. My name is not Burch yet. It’s Lena Grove.”

They look at one another. Mrs. Armstid’s voice is neither cold nor warm. It is not anything at all. “And so you want to catch up with him so your name will be Burch in time. Is that it?”

Unlike men who can change their names, Lena is left to chase the man who can change hers.

The characters in Light in August are lonely. They live in a world of isolation, where true emotions are hidden behind lying eyes. Husbands and wives rarely speak to each other, and when they do, the conversations are cordial and stiff at best. One of the interesting details I noticed while reading the novel’s first seven chapters is the way that Faulkner describes interactions between characters, and the way that eye contact (or lack thereof) plays an important role. It seems that a character’s true motivation, or true identity can be seen through the eyes. In their isolation, the characters in Light in August tend to avoid eye contact, either to hide their own motivations or avoid making any substantial connections with the other people.

When Armstid first picks up Lena on the side of the road, Faulkner writes, “Apparently Armstid has never once looked full at her” (12). When the second driver picks her up to take her to Jefferson, again Faulkner writes, “Apparently he has never looked at her, not even when she got into the wagon. Apparently she has never looked at him, either. She does not do so now” (28). In these early pages of the novel, Faulkner depicts a rather eerie world in which people interact with each other in the most minimal ways possible. As Lena and the second driver head toward Jefferson, the conversation is stark, and the driver watches her “from the corner of his eye” as she begins to eat (29). The driver is obviously curious about Lena, about her situation, her reasons for going to Jefferson, but he prefers to essentially spy on her while she eats, careful not to let on that he is paying attention.

The few times that the characters do make direct eye contact, the result is emotionally powerful. When Lena and Mrs. Armstid are in the kitchen, Mrs. Armstid asks Lena a question, bluntly: “Is your name Burch yet?…The young woman does not answer at once. Mrs Armstid…turns. Then she turns. They look at one another, suddenly naked, watching one another” (17). The intimacy of eye contact makes both of the characters feel, according to Faulkner, literally naked. Before this confrontation, the characters had exchanged casual niceties, but there was an air of formality, and only when Armstid asks about Lena’s true marital status and turns to face her do the characters finally become intimate. Later on in the novel, when the dietitian and the janitor have a heated discussion about five-year-old Jim Christmas, Faulkner writes of the janitor: “Though he was looking directly at her face he did not seem to see her at all, his eyes did not.  They looked like they were blind, wide open, icecold, fanatical” (129). The dietitian averts her gaze immediately upon receiving this piercing stare, as to avoid revealing her true nature.

What these two examples show is a fear of intimacy. Lena’s motivation for avoiding eye contact with her drivers is obvious. She feels ashamed about her desperate situation and reason for traveling to Jefferson. The drivers are simply a means to an end and she does not want to see the judgment in their eyes. The dietitian, similarly, feels guilt upon being ‘caught in the act’ by Joe Christmas, which is her motivation for “outing” him and getting him sent out of the orphanage.

We see examples of this fear of intimacy in almost all of the characters in the book. Armstid and his wife barely speak to each other or look at each other. McEachern and Joe are constantly avoiding eye contact or conversation with Mrs. McEachern. Joe Christmas goes weeks before he speaks with the workers at the paper mill. Byron ritualistically follows his weekly routine of solitary work only to sneak off in the woods to go live a brief alternate life at a church 30 miles outside of Jefferson. One could also make connections to other characters in the novels we’ve read. Vardamon works alone to try and make sense of the world around him, and in turn, creates a false reality in order to explain his mother’s death. Quentin stews in his own isolation, playing and replaying memories in his head until he is eventually driven to suicide. I believe that Faulkner felt as if he was writing in a time of transition – from southern aristocracy to a more modern, progressive time in which old traditions and the importance of strict Christian values were waning. Perhaps the characters feel caught in this time of transition, pulled by the contradicting desires of the self and the conservative, restricting values of their parents’ generation. This contradiction creates a sense of confusion and shame that drives the characters into isolation.

Love Thy Neighbor

We are Family

Brotherly Love

women as Sisters

These could be the positive attitudes of the  residents of Jefferson had they not been corrupt individuals of actions, word, and thought, living in the guise of Christianity and the shelter of God. One must wonder, How can Church going individuals be so judgmental? Yes i understand, no, realize, that the same standards used centuries ago to label and categorize a person are the same used today. This realization as illuminating as it may be to our conscious does not prevent us from making those same judgements time and time again. And so it occurs and re-occurs in Light In August.

The Congregation of The Church of The Rev. Gail Hightower, Shunned him after Mrs. Hightower’s display of infidelity, lunacy, and eventual suicide. “He came and entered the church. the congregation as one rose and walked out.” (69) Were they disheartened or repulsed by the behavior of Mrs. Hightower that these ‘Christians’ could not have consoled the Rev. to redeemed his heart and soul in God. Or was this the best guise to get rid of the Rev. for his unnatural and unconventional conveyance of a sermon. “He was wild in the pulpit, using religion as if it were a dream. Not a nightmare, but something which went faster than the words in the Book; ..And the old men and women did not like that.” (61-62)  It seems that this dislike for the Reverend stems from the knowledge that he “came straight to Jefferson from the seminary, refusing to accept any other call; how he had pulled every string he could in order to be sent to Jefferson.” (61) Rev. Gail Hightower was pompous and well connected and as it seems, wanted to show off his young, beautiful, and sophisticated wife to the country folks. His boastfulness, full of glee and pride contributed to his downfall as much as the transgressions of his wife. The country folks believe the Rev. intrigued with town and his desire to be there far outweighed his Biblical duties to serve the town efficiently.

All the details of the Rev. rise and falls were whispered throughout Jefferson to in an attempt to excommunicate him. More harmful bodily, and psychological injuries be-fall his staff. Should these be the actions of a God fearing people?  “Done Damned” so they labeled him.

A Prayer to Rev. Hightower

“Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I am greatful to God- whom i worship with a clear conscious, as my ancestors did- when i remember you in my prayers night and day.”

2 Timothy 1: 3

Ashley Persaud
Blog Post 4
As I Lay Dying

            On the surface, As I Lay Dying by Faulkner is a story about ‘simple’ people taking their dead mother from one town to another. However, with an in-depth reading of the story, we see there is more than meets the eye. Each character can be said to have some deep psychological issues, from Darl being crazy to Jewel and his tendency towards violence. Faulkner tells a highly complicated story underneath an extremely odd and tedious one. There are many ‘heavy’ events which occur that are interestingly ‘glossed over,’ and as readers we must ask why.

            Dewey Dell is a seventeen year old girl who is impregnated by a clever man named Lafe. As we know, each character has a motive for wanting to go to town other than burying Addie. Dewey Dell needs an abortion. She cannot get one from Peabody, the town’s doctor because then everyone in town would know about her situation.  Lafe gives Dewey Dell ten dollars and tells her to stop at a drug store to get what she needs. Dewey Dell is uninformed and embarrassed; because of this she does not know what questions to ask or how to ask them. Although this is not explicitly stated, Dewey Dell is taken advantaged of sexually by a man named MacGowan.

At the drug store, Dewey Dell confides in MacGowan, who claims to be the doctor she is looking for. “’What can I do for you?’ I says. ‘Are you the doctor?’ she says. ‘Sure,’ I says. She quit looking at me and was kind of looking around (p.242).” Dewey Dell enters the drug store. Jody, who is out front, tells MacGowan about a “pretty hot mamma, for a country girl” is outside. MacGowan chooses to talk to Dewey Dell and find out what is she looking for. Dewey Dell however, has trouble articulating her current situation. “’Now, madam,’ I says; ‘what is your trouble?’ ‘It’s the female trouble,’ she says, watching me. ‘I got the money,’ she says. ‘Ah,’ I says. ‘Have you got female troubles or do you want female troubles? If so, you come to the right doctor.’ Them country people. Half the time they dont know what they want, and the balance of the time they cant tell it to you (p.243).” Dewey Dell is ashamed and lacks the words to express what she is feeling. MacGowan already has presumptions of Dewey Dell’s lack of intelligence because she is from the country. He has a predisposed condescension of country girls and believes he can take advantage of her.

“She looks at me. She dont even blink. ‘What you want, then?’ The clock said four to one. So I decided I better get her out. ‘You guess three times and then I’ll show you,’ I says. She dont even blink her eyes.  ‘I got to do something,’ she says. She looks behind her and around, then she looks toward the front. Gimme the medicine first,’ she says (p.246).”  Despite the common consensus about Dewey Dell’s intelligence, she has enough common sense to figure out what MacGowan wants from her. Analytically, it is clear to the reader that Dewy Dell is aware of what MacGowan is asking. It is also obvious MacGowan plans on taking advantage of a desperate Dewey Dell. “She was waiting. She didn’t look at me now. ‘Where is it?’ she said. I have her box of capsules. She held the box in her hand, looking at the capsules.  ‘Are you sure it’ll work?’ she says. ‘Sure,’ I says. ‘When you take the rest of the treatment.’  ‘Where do I take it?’ she says. ‘Dow in the cellar,’ I says.  The insinuation is MacGowan has told Dewey Dell that sex will help her end her pregnancy.  We hear none of this from Dewey Dell, MacGowan’s narration ends.

Next we hear from Vardaman. Though he is young, Vardaman is observative. He may not understand all that he is noticing but obviously he sees it is worth mentioning. “They have all gone home to bed except me and Dewey Dell (p.250).” Vardaman doesn’t question the fact that he and Dewey Dell are traveling somewhere after dark, however he makes a mental note.  “She has been in there a long time. And the cow is gone too. A long time. She has been in there longer than the cow was…She looks at me. ‘It aint going to work,” she says. ‘That son of a bitch.’ ‘What aint going to work, Dewey Dell?’ ‘I just know it wont,’ she says. She is not looking at anything. ‘I just know it (p.251).’” Here, we learn about Dewey Dell once again from  another character, Vardaman. She visits MacGowan in hopes of his ‘medical’ help. However, Dewey Dell seems to have the instinct that she is being taken lied too.

Poor Dewey Dell is desperate and confused. She has no one to ask for help or advice. Because of this, she has to rely on men she does not know to give her what she needs. MacGowan sees helplessness in Dewey Dell and uses it to his advantage for sex. We do not get Dewey Dell’s perspective on this situation and what we read implies foul play. However, there is no deeper analysis given unless done by the reader themselves. Why is this the case? Does it have to do with the time, femininity, or is this just a complicated story told in a simple way.        

In the South, things go slower. Food gets slow-cooked, people talk in a leisurely drawl and life generally moves at an unhurried pace, except in NASCAR. In Light in August, Faulkner heightens this slowness to surreal proportions.

The boundaries of physics, pressed as they were in As I Lay Dying (“We go on, with a motion so soporific, so dreamlike as to be uninferant of progress, as though time and not space were decreasing between us and it.” –Darl, pp. 107-108), continue to receive their beating in LIA. The description of the wagon in the first chapter is obsessed with its slowness: “Though the mules plod in a steady and unflagging hypnosis, the vehicle does not seem to progress. It seems to hang suspended in the middle distance forever and forever, so infinitesimal is its progress…” (8). Lena is also portrayed as a slow, unimpedible force, “swollen, slow, deliberate, unhurried and tireless as augmenting afternoon itself” (10). This is far from the end of it: “The wagon goes on, slow, timeless…[Lena] eats slowly, steadily, sucking the rich sardine oil from her fingers with slow and complete relish” (29).

Why is Faulkner so focused on this slowness and why is it so integral to Southern identity?

Obviously, or perhaps hopefully, it can be read as a condemnation of Southern conservatism/tradition/stasis, in other words, obstinance. Things move so slowly in LIA that they secede from the laws of physics, achieving action without progress. They escape time – or perhaps, they attempt to escape the march of time, becoming stuck in the past like a fly in amber. As a political metaphor, that smells ripe. Race relations and the violence and injustice thereof have a prominent place in this novel, unlike the last two. We have already been introduced to the old maid Burden, a sympathetic “Negro lover” whose father was murdered for his activism and the Reverend Hightower, an intriguing and respectable man whose Negro relationships have contributed to his isolation and earned him a vicious assault.

There is a sort of sad, therapeutic, confessional tone to the book. Though he sometimes (often?) satires (skewers?) the characters of the South, Faulkner typically demonstrates a deep affection for the lifestyle, people and sensory impact of his lifelong home. There certainly is a charm to that melting-ice-cream drawl and the escape from the bees-swarming-a-nest life of the northern metropolises. The final scene of The Sound and the Fury (Luster, the carriage, the statue of the confederate soldier, Benjy’s unrest, Jason’s rescue) portrays a South forced to accommodate a new reality and suggests the author’s ambivalence on the matter. He has at times projected a suspiciousness about liberalism/modernity/change in his circumspect descriptions of automobiles and Negro political empowerment. LIA feels like somewhat of an apology for previous fence-sitting, as Faulkner questions a cherished “slow way of life” that has produced hate, ignorance and violence.

Besides this moral component, the approach to time and slowness fits into larger Faulknerian themes. The past is always present (wink) in these novels and events are never presented chronologically; their interrelatedness is more important than their order. In LIA, Burden’s murder occurs before Lena even enters the town in Chapter 1, yet 100 pages in, the killing itself has not yet been described (we know it’s coming, though). Events of the distant past – the life and death of Burden’s father and Hightower’s grandfather, slavery, the Civil War – all direct the contemporary events of the novel. To emphasize this point, the narration shifts back and forth from past to present tense.

So far, a fascinating read.

It’s been a few weeks since we finished The Sound and the Fury, but it has taken me this long to really come to terms with how this novel made me feel. Reading The Sound and the Fury was like some sort of terrifying roller coaster ride; I had been forced into it and couldn’t get out until it was over. After finishing it I felt real, physical relief. Though the entire novel left me reeling I think what threw me the most was the straight up woman hating anger Jason displayed. Although, in a strange way his total disdain for women is somehow both revolting and tender. Within his hierarchies of hatred Jason is able to use his anger towards one woman to protect another. Though Jason hates Caroline, Caddy, Quentin (his niece, obviously, not his brother), his girlfriend in another state, and Dilsey this hate is not distributed equally and shows in many different forms throughout Jason’s chapter.

There’s no real escaping Jason’s hate for women. His chapter opens with his strident statement, “Once a bitch always a bitch” (Faulkner 180).  Though he is ostensibly referring to his niece Quentin it is clear he’s really extending the word bitch outward to all of womankind. After all, Quentin is only sixteen; she hasn’t lived enough “once” for there to be an “always” (180). So the reader is immediately drawn into Jason’s seemingly endless spew of misogynist thought with his first comment. Jason is unwilling to give Quentin a chance at being anything more than a “bitch” because he believes all women to be nothing but bitches. However, his hate has levels to it. He does not hate his mother as much as he hates his niece; he does not hate his niece as much as he hates his sister. Jason is able to leverage these varying degrees of hate against one another. He is able to couch his cruelty towards Quentin and Caddy in kindness to his mother. He is not being unkind to Caddy when he takes her one thousand dollars then let’s her “see” her child by “[holding] her to the window” of a car for less than a minute (Faulkner 205). Instead, Jason can justify this meanness as being kind to his mother. After all, if Caroline ever found out her daughter had been in town she might have died from shock. Jason is always able to make his hatred and violence appear to be tenderness for his mother. He does everything for her. Yet one gets the sense that he would be cruel regardless of Caroline’s feelings. His tenderness is only a way to excuse himself from feeling too bad about his behavior.

Interestingly, for a man who has so little respect for women, Jason’s chapter seems to revolve almost entirely around women. Though Jason is the main character and main speaker what we hear most from him and other characters is how he relates to the women in his life. In many ways the women who surround him define him. He is forced to be a caretaker for his niece, for his mother, and in some strange way for his sister’s memory. Jason finds this role to be a burden yet he seems to gain some perverse joy from it as well. It is almost as if the hardship of this responsibility gives legitimacy to his constant anger. He is allowed to hate these women who put so much pressure on him. One almost imagines that he is cruel to them because without their burdens he might have to cease propelling himself forward through life with anger. When he speaks to his mother about taking care of Quentin he doesn’t speak in loving terms but instead says he wants to “control her” (Faulkner 181). He wants to do violence without anyone interfering. Instead of offering compassion or love in the role he’s been forced into he has only contempt and anger. His role as caretaker is a convenient release for his anger. As long as he’s lashing out at the women around him he doesn’t have to be introspective. Dilsey tells Jason she “dont [sic] put no devilment beyond [him]” and it’s true that there’s no real line in the sand for his hate to cross (Faulkner 185). Jason is willing to destroy everything around him to avoid having to face himself.

Ultimately Jason is a bastard. There is nothing terribly redeeming about him. Though at a glance he seems to do the things he does out of love a closer look reveals how awful he truly is. He made me feel ill reading him and it was almost mean of Faulkner to make his narrative the easiest to read.