Tag Archives: south

Dead Folks CreateThe Most Damage

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The town situated in Light in August is controlled/ran on purely through rumors and gossips. Similarly, to both As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, the people and the town, as a whole, are unable to move forward because everyone is fixated on past events, particularly on “the others”, Joe Christmas and Joe Brown, Joanna Burden, and Reverend Gail Hightower. On page 75, as Hightower questions Byron’s addiction to work at the mill, Byron answers, “I don’t know, I reckon that’s just my life… It is because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he cant escape from.” This passage I believe perfectly deconstructs the town’s manipulation for control through its usage of rumors and its isolation of others they view unfitting. The town metaphorically is considered “dead” since the town is unable to accept new changes and cannot identify with foreign ideas/ behaviors. The town and its people are also unable to forego past events such as the death of Hightower’s wife and overlook/ reaccept Hightower back into its community. Without the construction of rumors the town cannot function, it does not survive through capital received by the mills, but by the town’s desire to apprehend everything about each person’s past. The town’s identity is to be omniscient while obscuring the “other’s” identities. The town’s particular isolation of Joanna Burden and Joe Christmas are due to their affectionate behavior towards black people and their desire to challenge the town’s policy. Mrs. Burden’s isolation occurred from her parent’s desire to aid the blacks, but by Mrs. Burden hiring black works, it led to rumors and then complete isolation (53). The idea of what a black person signifies to the town is captured by the marshal’s inability to depart from the idea of Christmas possibly being black. The marshal immediately concludes Christmas is the murderer once his ethnicity is exposed and relieves Brown of questioning, “A nigger, I always thought there was something funny about that fellow… Well, I believe you are telling the truth at last. You go on Buck, now, get a good sleep. I’ll attend to Christmas”(98-99). This further reveals the church and the dependency of capital by the mill does not dictate the town’s actions, but through the town’s narrow minded views on race, identity, and inability for change. Typically, churches are depicted as the omniscient marker in a town, but by Reverend Gail Hightower’s denouncement as a reverend and his isolation from the town due to gossips formulated about his wife on pages 62-65, this indicates as well, the superiority of gossip and inability to accept new ideas.

Furthermore, the rumors constructed by the town are false, unreliable, and biased which are revealed in the conversations between Byron and Hightower. One rumor that is constructed on page 59 states, “No one has entered Hightower’s house in twenty-five years”, we know is false because Byron visits daily to converse/gossip with him. Hightower’s role in the novel is as a spectator. Isolated from the community, he is unable to be manipulated, to believe the rumors by the town are true, and questions the gossip Byron tells him (59). As Byron gossips to Hightower, the reader is able to catch a glimpse of Byron’s ordeal with identity. He’s stuck between being part of the town, its love for rumors and gossip, and as an “outsider”, excluding himself from the rumors and gossip. Though Byron is able to comprehend the rumors and gossips constructed by the town are false, he is so keen in not being excluded by the town that he works six days a week at the mill (75), but occasionally visits Hightower. On pages 73and 74 are two moments when Byron reveals the falsity of the rumors and gives his own perspective. Byron’s perspective of the town as stated, “…the entire affair had been a lot of people performing a play and that now at last they played out the parts which been allotted them and now they could live quietly with one another” (73). Also, he mentions, “He believed that the town had had the habit of saying things about the disgraced minister which they did not believe themselves, for too long a time to break themselves of it. “Because always’, he think, ‘when anything get to be a habit, it also manages to get a right good distance from truth and fact’ (74). From those two passages, I believe Faulkner may incorporate the South’s inability for change and its refusal to accept the loss of the Civil War into the novel. The character’s labeled as “outsiders” may symbolize the change forced onto the town while the town is indicative of the South’s internment of denial and refusal for change thus the reason the town chooses to live in the past by gossiping. Which leads me to believe the two passages foreshadows either the downfall of the town or the “outsiders” who perceive the town as their home. Overall, I believe the subplots within the book will come together with Byron as the main character who pieces together the significance of each character, Lena Grove, Hightower, Christmas, Brown, and Joanna Burden to one another.

Racism and Southern Perspective

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The differences in the racist perspectives of narrators in The Sound and The Fury generate a dialogue on race that points towards a pessimistic position on progress. Specifically in the juxtaposition of Quentin and Jason, the two new potential heads of the family, Faulkner uses racism and the close relationship between race and the South to show two modes of male impotency.

Quentin has an obsessive nostalgic appreciation of the black man. He imbues the black man with the timelessness and nobility of the south, but also the south’s stasis and immobility. In his memory of the black man and mule parked on the train tracks he recollects his “quality… of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity” derived from the “childlike incompetence and paradoxical reliability that… robs then steadily and evades responsibility and obligations” (87) This sort of racial archetype stands in for a post-slavery south that has no method of progress. Quentin’s racism points to a south in a slow decay of poetic timelessness.

Jason’s more antagonistic racism corresponds to the separatist vein of southern decay. His anti-semitic theories about northern Jews and his slave master persona in the town depict a southern maleness that is in opposition to the advancement of genial liberal ideas, and reinforce the fissure between the south and the rest of the US. Jason’s bitterness is quite different from Quentin’s dreamy nostalgic sense of laziness… just as Jason drives himself further and further into embarrassment, his racism illustrates the embarrassing realities of a racist south. His complaints often point to the expansive collective of black workers, and the white perception of the laziness and ineffectiveness of this working class. On 186 he complains that he “feeds a whole damn kitchen full of niggers to follow him around, but if I want an automobile tire changed, I have to do it myself.” This quote highlights the sense of reliance of white landowners, and the antagonistic relationship of racism and codependency.

Faulkner offers counter-perspectives to the white male despondency in the final section of the novel during the church scene, illuminating the spiritual community of the working class with a social unity that is missing from the incestual individualism of the white landowners. Jason and Quentin, however, show how race, class, progress and space, are intertwined in a portrait of decline.