Faulkner's Light In August--Shadowy Writing On A Piece Of Blank Paper

William Faulkner is a preeminent master in American literature in the 20th century. He was born in 1897 in New Albany along the Mississippi river and then in 1902 moved with his family to Oxford County, which can be taken as his second hometown. Faulkner compared his hometown to "my own little postage stamp of native soil" that was a "gold mine" of never-exhausted resources for his literary creation. Oxford later became the prototype of the fictional world "Yoknapatawpha" with its town city at "Jefferson."Among Faulkner's novels, The Sound and the Fury (1929) is of course the most distinguished in that it established Faulkner as a great modernist writer. In addition, As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) are also considered as Faulkner's masterpieces. Faulkner's creativeness in the fiction writing won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, which is an affirmation of his great achievement.This thesis mainly proceeds with the discussion of the novel Light in August. Basically, the novel takes two parallel plots: one traces the life of the male protagonist, Joe Christmas; the other is after the search for her husband by the female protagonist, Lena Grove. The former one ends up with the tragic death of Joe while the latter turns out a comic union of Lena with Byron, her loyal escort. Hence, the novel is a tragicomic. The life career of Joe is full of setbacks and ordeals. His behavior is outlandish, he does not cherish hope for lifeand he reacts to his surroundings with cynic and passive attitude. To him, destiny is an evanescent sojourn from life to death, any form of human struggle against which is a valueless request. On the contrary, Lena holds a positive and active view on her life. In spite of her husband's betrayal, she can still remain composed. The two protagonists present a striking contrast, by means of which readers develop a deeper concern about the tragic Joe Christmas.The thesis is divided into five parts. The introduction gives a general view on the fictional background and the echoing of the critical field on the novel. Chapter one makes an emphatic discussion of the two major heroes-Joe Christmas and Gail Hightower. The analysis of Joe can be further divided into two branches-Joe in the tragedy and the cause-and-effect of the tragedy. In his tragic world, male society and female society do not go against each other because of the difference on sex. They are the obstinate tamer, and at the same time miserable sufferer, or victim. Take Joanna Burden and Hines for instance. Joanna makes painstaking efforts in the wish to transform Joe from an undisciplined to a disciplined man. The reward for her efforts is Joe's murder of her. Hines is the frantic grandfather of Joe. He doubts that his grandson has black blood and wishes to see the punishment of God on Joe. In the end, his mental health is nearly put to the verge of a breakdown. In the analysis of the cause-and-effect of Joe's tragedy, the thesis lays its emphasis on the problem of his blood origin, which serves as the ultimate cause. Joe is facing such kind of dilemma in his blood origin: neither black nor white, either black orwhite, and both black and white. A partial community triggers the crisis of the problem. So, the death of Joe is a pungent retort to that insensitive community and at the same time the relief of himself. Gail Hightower is another hero shares the coloring of tragedy. He is so immersed in the illusory past glory of his grandfather in the Civil War. He intentionally alienates himself from the community having the illusion that he is immune to the outside world, with which he eventually comes to reconcile. The tragedy of Gail Hightower is analyzed mainly from the psychological depth.Chapter two has analyzed the thematic concerns of the novel. The thesis once again emphasizes the negative impact of the outer community on the protagonists. Race problem is certainly a significant concern. However, due to the race problem, the mental inertia imbedded in the Deep South h...