Light in August

Light in August
Study Guide by Course Hero
TENSE
What's Inside Light in August is told in a mix of present and past tense.
ABOUT THE TITLE

j Book Basics ................................................................................................. 1 Faulkner spoke at the University of Virginia where he said that
the title Light in August is about the special "luminosity" in
d In Context ..................................................................................................... 1 August in Mississippi. "In August in Mississippi," he said,
"there's a few days somewhere about the middle of the month
a Author Biography ..................................................................................... 3
when suddenly there's a foretaste of fall, it's cool, there's a
h Characters .................................................................................................. 4 lambence, a luminous quality to the light." It reminded him, he
said, "of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian
k Plot Summary ............................................................................................. 8 civilization." Light and darkness become contrasting motifs in
the novel.
c Chapter Summaries .............................................................................. 14
g Quotes ........................................................................................................ 27
l Symbols ..................................................................................................... 30 d In Context

m Themes ...................................................................................................... 30
e Suggested Reading .............................................................................. 32 Yoknapatawpha County

One of the cohesive aspects of Faulkner's body of work is the
fictional location in Mississippi where the majority of his tales
j Book Basics take place. Yoknapatawpha County was first referenced in the
novel Sartoris (1929), which was a revision of the novel Flags in
AUTHOR the Dust (not published in its original form until 1973). The
William Faulkner fictional county would be the setting for many of his novels and
short stories, and references to residents of the area would
YEAR PUBLISHED cross-pollinate those texts. Yoknapatawpha County was based
1932 in part on Oxford, Mississippi, in Lafayette County.
GENRE In 1929 the first major novel of Faulkner's career, The Sound
Tragedy and the Fury, was also set in this fictional county. This pattern
would hold true for other acclaimed major novels, including As I
PERSPECTIVE AND NARRATOR
Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom,
Light in August is told by an omniscient third-person narrator
Absalom! (1936). It would also be the setting of his
who conveys the thoughts and feelings of characters across
commercially successful but controversial novel Sanctuary
time. However, many characters relate first-person stories
(1931). He returned to Yoknapatawpha County with the 1938
through dialogue, which aides in their characterization.
publication of The Unvanquished as well as the Snopes Trilogy
Light in August Study Guide In Context 2
(beginning with The Hamlet in 1940). A map of the layout of his decision permitted "separate but equal" facilities for black and
fictional county, drawn by Faulkner, is archived in The William white citizens. Although the decision specified "equal" facilities,
Faulkner Collection at the University of Virginia. the reality is that this was seldom the case. Black schools,
public bathrooms, drinking fountains, and other facilities and
institutions rarely equaled those for whites. The Plessy v.
Prohibition and Bootleggers Ferguson decision was not reversed until 1954.
One effect of these inequities was the tightening of the

In Light in August, the characters of both Joe Christmas and
definition of what it meant to be a "person of color." Prior to the
Joe Brown (who also goes by the name Lucas Burch) are
Civil War, there had been a degree of tolerance for people of
"bootleggers." They were modeled on the many people who
mixed ancestry, especially in Louisiana where there had been
were learning to turn a profit on the federal prohibition on the
"half-French free persons of color." Joe Christmas spends the
sale of alcohol. The 18th Amendment (also known as the
majority of Light in August wrestling with his perceived racial
National Prohibition Act), which outlawed the sale of alcohol,
identity. Tellingly he has no proof of his identity. He is called
was ratified on January 29, 1919.
racial epithets as a child and later believes himself to have
The decision to make the sale of alcohol illegal was not without black ancestry. He tells various women that he "thinks" he
precursor. For nearly a century temperance laws (those does, but he has no confirmation either way. Eventually,
limiting the sale of alcohol) were passed. The first of these was midway into the book, Joanna Burden asks the question that
in 1838 in Massachusetts. That law limited the sale of alcohol the reader may be asking when Joe claims that he knows that
to 15 gallons at a time. Between 1851 and 1855, there were 13 one of his parents was of African descent. She asks, "How do
states with laws limiting hard alcohol sales; however, 12 of you know that?" Joe has no answer. All he can say is "If I'm not,
those states had repealed the laws by 1863. The forces in damned if I haven't wasted a lot of time." The novel never
favor of temperance were strong, though, and after the Civil answers the question. The suspicion of being black was reason
War (1861–65) both the Prohibition Party and Women's enough for being treated unfairly, as is apparent in the way
Christian Temperance Union were formed. A third organization, that the sheriff treats the potential black witness when he
the Anti-Saloon League, was created in 1893. wants to know who lives in the cabin. He and the other men
strike the man with a strap in order to get answers.
When the National Prohibition Act went into effect, the climate
for pleasure was high. Radio, film, and vaudeville were all The novel uses the offensive term nigger throughout, and the
popular. In response to the passage of the act, many people treatment of the black men and women in the novel is
began making their alcohol at home, concocting "bathtub gin," reflective of a level of hostility that was common in the post-
and selling it on the black market. This illegal industry arguably Civil War South. This inequality was legalized not only on the
gave birth to continuing criminal enterprises. These criminal state level, but upheld in the Supreme Court decision of Plessy
elements produced and smuggled liquor, sold it, and created v. Ferguson. Faulkner may not have been writing to explicitly
businesses to provide it to the people. expose the racial injustice that was common at the time but
Light in August provides a clear visual of the pervasiveness of
such injustice.
Race and Segregation in the
1920s and 1930s Faulknerian Style
Between the end of Reconstruction (1877), the rebuilding years Faulkner is generally considered a modernist, the literary term
that followed the Civil War (1861–65), and the advances in civil for writers working from 1914–45. Unlike their predecessors,
rights in the 1950s, numerous laws enforced racial segregation the romantics, modernist writers do not try to depict any kind
in the South. These laws, often called "Jim Crow laws," enabled of ideal, natural beauty. Instead, they describe the world in its
inequality to grow. The most well-known of these was the 1896 gritty, often unpleasant state and search for beauty within that
Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. This state. Faulkner's novel Light in August contains violent murder,
rape, arson, deceit, a fugitive, and a castration. As a Southern
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Light in August Study Guide Author Biography 3
author, Faulkner also works in what is called the Southern to live with Phil Stone, a poet and literary mentor who had
Gothic. His fiction deals with issues in the modern era that recognized Faulkner's tremendous talent and helped him hone
were central to the South, and he does so in a way that is his writing skills. To continue his literary studies, Faulkner
intentionally grotesque to shock the reader's sensibilities, give enrolled at the University of Mississippi. He published his first
them a new perspective on humanity, and force them to think poems and short works in the student newspaper, but he soon
about ancient and complex themes differently. Among these lost interest in coursework and dropped out after 3 semesters.
are the divisions between "Old South" and "New South," as well
as topics of miscegenation (mixture of races) and a "mythic
past." Growth as a Writer
The tendency to see the past as present to some degree
In 1924 Phil Stone helped Faulkner publish a book of poetry,
explains another aspect of Faulkner's style—the so called
The Marble Faun. Two years later, another literary mentor,
"Faulknerian" prose. Faulkner tends toward a non-linear style
writer Sherwood Anderson, helped Faulkner publish his first
of writing. In Light in August the reader will note that there are
novel, Soldiers' Pay, about a wounded aviator returning home
swaths of the novel that are entirely back story to the current
after World War I. Anderson then encouraged Faulkner to start
events. Faulkner wrote, in one of his often-quoted passages
writing about his native Mississippi—a suggestion that inspired
from his novel Requiem for a Nun (1951), that "the past is never
Faulkner's greatest literary successes. His first well-known
dead. It's not even past." The idea that the past, the familial and
novel, The Sound and the Fury (1929), was set in
cultural history, factor into the present story is a hallmark of
Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional place very similar to
Faulkner's style, as well as much of Southern fiction.
Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner grew up. The
Another trait of Faulknerian fiction is a fluid narrative structure. Sound and the Fury centers on the Compson family, a once-
Not only is the timeline non-linear, but the point of view is often wealthy Southern family in decline. Written in an experimental,
fluid as well. The reader will note that the idea of "authority" is often stream-of-consciousness style, with a fine ear for
sometimes unreliable. When the reader learns of the murder of Southern speech, the novel wasn't immediately successful, but
Joe Christmas's biological father, it is by Byron Bunch telling over time it brought Faulkner great critical praise; in 1998 the
Hightower. Byron learns this from Mrs. Hines, who learns it Modern Library ranked the novel 6th on its list of 100 best
from Doc Hines. No person who was present at that murder is novels of the 20th century.
involved in the reveal.

In 1929—the year of the stock market crash and the beginning
of the severe economic downturn known as the Great
Depression (1929–39)—Faulkner reunited with Estelle Oldham,
a Author Biography who was now divorced with 2 children. Faulkner and Estelle
quickly married, and Faulkner took a job at the University of
Mississippi power plant to support his new family. The couple
Early Life would go on to have a daughter, Alabama, who died only a few
days after she was born.
Nobel Prize–winning author William Faulkner was born William Faulkner wrote both Sanctuary (1931) and As I Lay Dying (1930)
Cuthbert Falkner on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, during the early days of his marriage. Sanctuary was written
Mississippi. (He later changed the spelling of his last name.) before As I Lay Dying, but it was published after it. A
When Faulkner was 5 years old, his family moved to Oxford, sensational novel about the brutal rape of a young woman,
Mississippi, where he would spend most of his life. The oldest Sanctuary was Faulkner's first commercial success.
of 4 boys, Faulkner read widely, wrote poetry, and loved to
draw, but as he grew older, school began to bore him, and he Faulkner claimed he wrote As I Lay Dying in 6 weeks, between
dropped out in 11th grade. During his teens, Faulkner fell in love midnight and 4 a.m., without revising a word. Although he may
with a vivacious and charming girl named Estelle Oldham. have been exaggerating a bit, the resulting novel eventually
When Estelle agreed to marry another man, Faulkner was was recognized as every bit the "tour de force" he proclaimed
heartbroken. He decided to move to New Haven, Connecticut, it. Like The Sound and the Fury before it, As I Lay Dying, Light in

Light in August Study Guide Characters 4
August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) are set in

Yoknapatawpha County. h Characters
As I Lay Dying (1930) tells the story of the poor Bundren family
who is traveling to bury the matriarch of the family, Addie
Bundren, in Jefferson, Mississippi, where she was born. It does Joe Christmas
so in 15 voices, including that of the deceased woman. Light in
August (1932) is also set in the fictional Jefferson, in Joe Christmas is the illegitimate son of Milly Hines and a circus
Yoknapatawpha County. That novel recounts the story of Lena worker who described himself as Mexican. He's left at an
Grove—a poor, pregnant, unmarried woman who is seeking the orphanage where his biological grandfather, Doc Hines (who
father of her child—and Joe Christmas, a young angry man believes the circus worker was black), works as a janitor.
who is passing for white. Race and gender issues figure heavily Eventually Joe is adopted by a fervently religious man, Simon
in the novel. The Compson family from The Sound and the Fury McEachern, who changes his name to Joe McEachern.
reappears in Absalom, Absalom! This novel focuses on Thomas McEachern is stern and physically abusive. In his teens, Joe
Sutpen and his family and explores the effects of racism and assaults a young black woman, dates a prostitute, and attacks
miscegenation on Sutpen's ambition to create a great his adoptive father. Joe travels and eventually settles in
Southern plantation dynasty carrying his name. Jefferson where he is involved with Joanna Burden. He kills
her, runs, is arrested, and is eventually killed and castrated.
Later Career and Recognition

Lena Grove
Beginning in 1932, Faulkner worked intermittently as a
screenwriter for a number of different film houses over the At age 12 Lena became an orphan and went to live with her
next 2 decades; his work included screen adaptations of brother who was 20 years her senior and his family. At 20, she
novels by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler. At the began slipping out the window to see Joe Brown, then known
same time, he continued publishing novels and short stories, as Lucas Burch. When she became pregnant, Brown left and
including his trilogy about the Snopes family—The Hamlet Lena's brother "called her whore." Near her due date, Lena
(1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959)—and the sets out on foot to find Brown. Lena is a placid woman,
collection Go Down, Moses (1942). Eventually, critics caught up determined to find and marry the child's father. The book ends
to Faulkner's prodigious talent, and he began to amass literary with her still pursuing him—this time in the company of Byron
prizes. He was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, and Bunch, who wants to marry her himself.
he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice: in 1955 for his World
War II novel A Fable (1954) and (posthumously) in 1963 for his
last novel, The Reivers (1962), a coming-of-age novel about a Joe Brown
boy from Yoknapatawpha County.
Joe Brown is a man avoiding responsibility. He changed his
Faulkner was an alcoholic for much of his life and was name to hide from Lena. He quit his job to be a bootlegger, and
hospitalized periodically for the disease. An avid horseback when confronted with the fire and death of Miss Burden, he
rider, he fell several times while riding in his later years, tells the sheriff that Joe Christmas is black. When confronted
sustaining injuries that left him physically weak. A final fall by his newborn child, he climbs out a window and abandons
resulted in a heart attack, from which he died on July 6, 1962 in her again, ultimately hopping a train.
Byhalia, Mississippi.
Joanna Burden
Joanna Burden was raised by a religious man who taught her
that her duty and her "curse" was to "raise up" black men and

women. She is ostracized by the folks in Jefferson, and her

dealings are almost solely with black men and women. She
lives alone in her large house, retains a black lawyer in
Memphis, and she spends her days advising trustees, faculty,
and graduates of black colleges. For 3 years, she is intimately
and secretly involved with Joe Christmas. After claiming that
she is pregnant by Joe, she starts trying to plan for his future.
She wants to send him to college and eventually hand her
business dealings over to him. When he resists, she tries to
shoot him (saving a second bullet for herself), and Joe kills her.
Byron Bunch
Byron works at the mill in Jefferson, Mississippi. Both Joe
Christmas and Joe Brown work there briefly. Byron encounters
the very pregnant Lena Grove, who is seeking Lucas Burch.
Instead, she finds Byron Bunch, who inadvertently reveals that
Lucas is there under the name of Joe Brown. He takes on the
role of protecting Lena, eventually offering to marry her, a
proposal she refuses. He also seeks the help of his friend,
Reverend Hightower, to save Joe Christmas. At the close of
the novel, he is traveling with Lena, still offering marriage, and
helping her look for Joe Brown.
Reverend Gail Hightower

Hightower is a man who lives surrounded by
"phantoms"—memories of his family, wife, and the people of
Jefferson. He is living alone at the time of the novel, no longer a
minister and widowed as a result of his unfaithful wife's murder
or suicide. He's a friend of Byron Bunch, delivers Lena's baby,
and attempts to stop the murder of the fugitive Joe Christmas.

Character Map
Lena Grove
Pregnant young woman;
searches for her unborn Loves
child's father
Father of
her child
Joanna Burden Joe Brown

Abolitionist spinster Lover and Immoral, drunk gambler
murderer
Fellow
Joe Christmas
bootleggers
Rejected wanderer;
has a troubled past
Coworkers
Coworkers
Reverend Gail
Byron Bunch
Hightower
Friends Mill worker; choir director
Defrocked minister
Main Character
Other Major Character
Minor Character

Full Character List Calvin Burden was Joanna Burden's

grandfather. She tells of him while
Calvin Burden
explaining her family history to Joe
Christmas.
Character Description
Nathaniel was Joanna Burden's father.

Joe Christmas is around 33 years old
He was married to a woman of Spanish
Joe Christmas and believes himself to be black, Nathaniel
ancestry, had one son, and then
although this question is never settled. Burden
married Joanna's mother and had her
after his son died.
Lena Grove is a young, pregnant
Lena Grove
unmarried woman from Alabama.
Calvin Burden Calvin Burden Jr. was Joanna Burden's
Jr. brother. He died before she was born.
Joe Brown, whose real name is Lucas
Burch, is a young man who has
Joe Brown With Max Confrey, Mame owns a
abandoned the pregnant Lena Grove.
Mame Confrey house of prostitution where Bobbie
He is living in Jefferson.
Allen lives and works.
Joanna Burden is a 40-year-old single

With Mame Confrey, Max owns a
Joanna white woman in Jefferson, Mississippi.
Max Confrey house of prostitution where Bobbie
Burden She is murdered by Joe Christmas
Allen lives and works.
after a 3-year relationship with him.
The deputy assists the sheriff in

Byron Bunch is an older, single, steady investigating the murder of Joanna
worker in Jefferson whose life is Deputy
Byron Bunch Burden and in hunting for Joe
changed when Lena Grove appears in Christmas.
town.
The furniture repairer picks up Byron

Hightower is a 50-year-old man who Furniture Bunch, Lisa Grove, and her baby as
Reverend Gail
has been cast out by his church after repairer they search for Joe Brown in the final
Hightower
his wife's death. chapter.
Bobbie Allen is a prostitute, as well as Percy Grimm is a white supremacist

Joe Christmas's first "girlfriend." He Percy Grimm
Bobbie Allen who kills and castrates Joe Christmas.
asks her to marry him after
(presumably) killing his adoptive father.
Mrs. Hightower was the wife of the
Reverend Gail Hightower who died
Armstid offers Lena a ride into before the novel begins. She would
Armstid Jefferson and lodging at his house for Mrs.
vanish for stretches of time, and she
a night. Hightower
died (by murder or suicide) in Memphis
where she was in a hotel with another
Mrs. Armstid is a no-nonsense woman man.
Mrs. Martha
who gives money to Lena to help her,
Armstid
but also looks on her with disapproval. Doc Hines, also known as Eupheus and
Uncle Doc, is a religious extremist,
Miss Atkins is the dietitian at the father to Milly, and grandfather to Joe
orphanage where Joe Christmas lives Christmas. He is the janitor at the
in the first years of his life. She tries to Doc Hines orphanage where he abandons the
Miss Atkins infant Joe whom he later kidnaps;
have Joe transferred to an orphanage
for black children after he sees her when he learns that Joe is accused of
with a man. murder, he attempts to incite a lynch
mob to kill him.

Light in August Study Guide Plot Summary 8
offer to help her. Mr. Armstid gives her a ride and shelter for
Mrs. Hines is married to Doc Hines,
mother to Milly, and grandmother to the night. Byron Bunch gives her his room at the boarding
Joe Christmas, whom she's not seen house. She also meets Mrs. Martha Armstid, who gives her
Mrs. Hines
since he was an infant. She attempts to money but also shows her disapproval.
save him when she learns of his murder
charge.
Meanwhile, in Jefferson, Lucas Burch has been going by the
name Joe Brown. He'd been working at the mill with Joe
Milly Hines had relations with a man
Christmas, a man who believes himself to be of mixed
she believed to be a Mexican and ran
Milly Hines away with him. Her father (Doc Hines) ancestry, and Byron Bunch, a steady worker and quiet man.
killed him, and Milly died in childbirth; Brown and Christmas are no longer working at the mill. They
she is the mother of Joe Christmas. have quit and are making a living as bootleggers. The men live
at a cabin on the Burden property.
Mr. McEachern adopts Joe Christmas
when the boy is 5 years old, and then Inadvertently Byron reveals a detail about Joe Brown clarifying
Simon physically abuses him, which he calls
that he is Lucas Burch. At the same time, there is news of a fire
McEachern discipline. When Joe is 18, McEachern
is attacked by Joe (and presumed and a murder at Miss Burden's place. Byron hides this
dead). information from Lena because of the potential for Joe
Brown's involvement.
Mrs. McEachern is Joe Christmas's
adoptive mother, and in her way, she
Mrs.
tries to care for him. She lets him know
McEachern
of her secret money, brings him food, Reverend Hightower
and tries to be kind.
The novel switches from the current time to the history of
Mooney is the foreman at the mill Reverend Gail Hightower. Hightower was a minister in
Mooney where Joe Christmas and Joe Brown
Jefferson, but a scandal over his wife—who would vanish for
work.
lengths of time and eventually died—caused the town to fire
him. Hightower's wife died in Memphis where she was with
The sheriff is the chief law
enforcement officer in Jefferson. He another man. That death was either suicide or murder.
Sheriff
investigates the murder of Joanna Hightower also ran afoul of the Ku Klux Klan and was
Burden. assaulted by them. Now he lives quietly in Jefferson on his
own.
Gavin Stevens is the District Attorney
Gavin Stevens
in Jefferson for Joe Christmas's trial. The story switches to the present tense, and Byron is visiting
Hightower. Byron updates Hightower on Lena and the fire, and
Varner is the owner of a store in tells him that Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden were intimate
Varner
Jefferson, Mississippi.
the last 3 years.
k Plot Summary Joe Christmas's History

The story moves backward in time once more in telling of Joe
Christmas's life prior to his arrival in Jefferson. From Chapter 5
Currently in Jefferson through Chapter 12, the events of Joe's life are recounted.
Joe's story starts in an orphanage where he spies on a dietitian
The novel opens with Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman, and a young doctor making love. His discovery causes him to
walking from Alabama to Mississippi to find Lucas Burch, the be transferred to an all-black orphanage. The janitor (later
father of her child. While seeking Burch, Lena encounters revealed to be Joe's grandfather, Doc Hines) kidnaps him but is
various people in Jefferson. Among them are several men who caught and Joe is returned.

Joe is then adopted by Mr. and Mrs. McEachern. The man is The sheriff and deputy discover that Lena is now living in the
cold and stern, and he uses physical punishments often. When cabin, and they learn that Joe Brown is actually Lucas Burch
Joe is 8, he is punished with a whipping and passes out as a and the father of her child. A black man comes to town telling
result. At 14, Joe is with other boys, and one of them has of a "white man" who showed up at his church revival. The man,
arranged with a young black woman to have sex with the boys whom readers later learn was Joe Christmas, cursed God and
in a shed. When Joe Christmas gets his turn, he begins beating was violent and abusive to the worshipers. The story switches
her, and the other boys stop him. to Joe Christmas who is not dead but is in a state of shock, in
part from sleep deprivation and hunger. Joe Christmas
At 18, Joe meets Bobbie Allen, a woman he thinks is a waitress. eventually rides into Mottstown, where he is arrested.
He sneaks out of the McEachern house to see her, and they
begin a sexual relationship. Joe discovers that she is a An old man in Mottstown, Doc Hines, witnesses Joe's arrest
prostitute. He hits her, but continues seeing her. Simon and is rattled.
McEachern catches Joe with Bobbie at a dance one night, and
McEachern attacks him. This time Joe responds with rage. He
knocks the man down, violently striking him and presumably More History
killing him. Joe offers to marry Bobbie, who rejects him and
leaves with Max and Mame Confrey (owners of the cafe and Doc Hines and his family take up the story of Joe Christmas's
house of prostitution where she works). Joe is left beaten and family. The Hines had a daughter, Milly, who took up with a
injured. Mexican circus employee that Mr. Hines swore was black. He
followed Milly when she ran away with the circus worker, killed
Afterward Joe leaves town and begins to travel. He continues
the man, and brought Milly home. Hines tried to find a doctor to
doing so until he is 33 years old. At that time he arrives in
perform an abortion, but then lost his temper. He went into a
Jefferson. He squats in a cabin and takes up with Joanna
church meeting and began speaking racist things and
Burden, a 40-year-old unmarried white woman who lives on
brandishing a gun. Ultimately he landed in jail and when he got
her own in the plantation house adjacent to the cabin. For 3
out, it was near Milly's delivery time. She gave birth to Joe
years, they have a relationship. Joanna finally says that she's
Christmas, and she died. Hines took the baby to an orphanage
become pregnant. Instead of suggesting marriage, she
in Memphis and left the infant on the doorstep. Hines worked
suggests that Joe study and become a lawyer to take over her
as a janitor at the orphanage.
business affairs. When Joe refuses, she presses him to
reconsider and asks him to pray with her. He refuses again,
and when she attempts to shoot him, he kills her.
Back to the Present
Joe Christmas is now being held in Jefferson. Mr. and Mrs.
Return to the Present Hines are there, too. Byron Bunch, who is at Hightower's house
with Mrs. Hines, asks Hightower to lie to provide an alibi for
The story returns to the present where the townsfolk are
Joe Christmas. Reverend Gail Hightower is furious and kicks
assembled at the site of the fire and the nearly beheaded body
them out. The next morning Lena Grove delivers her child.
of Joanna Burden. Upon learning of her death, Miss Burden's
nephew offers "a thousand dollar reward for the capture of her Byron sets out to ask the sheriff if he can tell Joe Brown about
murderer." In Jefferson, Joe Brown comes to see the sheriff, the baby. Mrs. Hines is confused, mistaking Lena for her
hoping to collect the "thousand dollars reward." Dogs and men daughter, Milly. She thinks the baby is her grandson, Joe
hunt for Joe Christmas, who is on the run. Christmas. Mr. Hines sets out to incite a lynch mob. The deputy
brings Joe Brown to see Lena and the baby, but he flees,
Reverend Gail Hightower and Byron Bunch talk about Joe
taking a train out of town, but not before fighting Byron.
Brown's revelation that Joe Christmas is racially mixed,
although this is never confirmed. Hightower and Byron also talk Meanwhile Percy Grimm organizes people to patrol the
about Byron's feelings toward Lena Grove and his decision to Jefferson downtown and ends up himself pursuing Joe
protect her. Christmas, who has escaped from police custody. Percy finds

Joe in Hightower's house, where he shoots him repeatedly, and

castrates him before he dies.
The novel closes with Hightower thinking over the "phantoms"

in his past, especially his father, grandfather, and wife.
Elsewhere in Tennessee, a furniture dealer tells his wife about
the odd young couple he gave a ride to, Lena Grove and Byron
Bunch traveling in search of the baby's father.

Plot Diagram
Climax
7
Falling Action
6
Rising Action
5 8
4
9
3
Resolution
2
1
Introduction
7. Percy Grimm finds, shoots, and castrates Joe Christmas.

Introduction
1. Lena Grove walks from Alabama to Mississippi.

Falling Action
8. Hightower reflects on history, "phantoms," and family.
Rising Action
2. Joanna Burden is murdered and her house burned.

Resolution
3. Joe Christmas is arrested in Mottstown.
9. Lena and Byron travel in search of the baby's father.
4. Lena Grove delivers her child.
5. Joe Brown hops a train and abandons Lena Grove.
6. Joe Christmas escapes and hides in Hightower's house.
Climax

Timeline of Events
1920s August
Lena Grove walks from Alabama to Mississippi.
Shortly before that
Joe Brown and Joe Christmas quit their jobs at the mill.
When Lena Grove arrives
Byron Bunch reveals to Lena that Joe Brown is really

Lucas Burch.
That same time
Joanna Burden is murdered and her house burned.
Shortly after
Joanna Burden's nephew offers a reward for the capture

of her murderer.
About a week later
Joe Christmas is arrested in Mottstown.
Sunday
Byron Bunch asks Reverend Gail Hightower to lie to

provide an alibi for Joe Christmas.
Monday
Lena Grove delivers her child.
A few days later
The deputy brings Joe Brown to see Lena Grove and the
baby.
Within hours
Joe Brown hops a train and abandons Lena Grove.
That week
Percy Grimm organizes a patrol in downtown Jefferson.

Shortly after
Joe Christmas escapes and hides in Reverend Gail

Hightower's house.
Within hours
Percy finds Joe, shoots him, and castrates him before he

dies.
Sometime after
Hightower reflects on history, "phantoms," and family.
Two months later
Lena and Byron travel in search of the baby's father.

Light in August Study Guide Chapter Summaries 14
statement of coming from Mississippi to Tennessee.

c Chapter Summaries
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Summary
Summary
Byron Bunch recalls the arrival of a new worker, a man in a
pressed suit whose surname is Christmas. He works in his fine
Lena Grove is walking from Alabama in search of Lucas Burch,
clothes, smokes, and isn't social. In fact, he is something of a
the father of her unborn child. In Mississippi she comes across
mysterious figure about whom none of his coworkers know
Armstid, who offers her a ride in his wagon and ultimately
anything. Come the second week, he has new overalls.
invites her to rest at his house for the night. His wife breaks out
Christmas works at the mill for 3 years and then, just 6 months
her "egg money" and gives the money to her husband to give
ago, another worker, calling himself Joe Brown, is hired.
Lena. In the morning Mrs. Armstid cooks breakfast and leaves
Several of the men then recall that they've bought whiskey
it out for Lena and Armstid, but does not speak to the unwed
from Joe Christmas for several years in the woods "behind an
pregnant woman again. Armstid takes Lena to Varner's store
old colonial plantation house" owned by a woman named
where Varner tells her that there is a man at the mill called
Burden. Christmas and Brown work shoveling sawdust. One
Bunch not Burch and who has worked there 7 years. At the
day—right after the workers see Brown and Christmas in a new
store Lena buys a 15-cent tin of sardines, and then she gets a
car—Christmas quits. Brown follows not long after.
ride to Jefferson where she thinks Lucas is. She talks to the
wagon driver and eats her sardines. As they crest a hill and
Byron Bunch is approached by Lena Grove (a young woman
approach Jefferson, the driver points out a column of yellow
unknown to him), who is disappointed that he is not the man
smoke. "That's a house burning," he says. The chapter closes
she was seeking. They discuss that no one is around because
with "I ain't been on the road but four weeks, and now I am in
of the fire at Joanna Burden's house. Byron suggests that
Jefferson already."
"folks in this town will call it a judgment on her" because she is
a Yankee. He tells Lena about Joe Christmas and Joe Brown,
and in the conversation she realizes that Joe Brown is Lucas
Analysis Burch. Byron is "already in love, though he does not know it"
and "could have bitten his tongue in two" when he realizes
Lena Grove is a modern Madonna figure. She is a character
what he's told her.
who is with child, barefoot, in pursuit of the missing father.
Despite this—and the reader might recall that the judgment of
an unwed mother in the 1920s (the time of the setting) and
1930s (the time of the novel's publication) was extremely
Analysis
harsh—Lena is placid.
Byron Bunch enters Lena Grove's life due to a name similarity.
Lucas Burch and Byron Bunch sound close enough that Lena
The symbolic representations of fertility in Lena's character
seeks him out, hoping that he is the man she's looking for.
are not only in her name (Grove, as in a fertile copse of trees)
Notably, he is in some way the man she seeks in that upon her
and her pregnant state. Martha Armstid gives Lena her "egg
arrival Lena enters into Byron's care. He protects her, shelters
money." Eggs, of course, are representations of fertility as well.
her, and he does so for reasons of his own. The narrator—and
The sentiment with which Lena begins her journey—"I ain't later Hightower—attribute this to love or to lust or
been on the road but four weeks, and now I am in Jefferson covetousness. Regardless of the reason (which Faulkner never
already"—will be echoed at the close of the novel. Here, she explicitly clarifies), Byron becomes a husband-like presence in
notes that she's come a "fur piece" from Alabama to Lena's life. Lena maintains her Madonna-like state in that she
Mississippi. At the close of the novel, that will be repeated in a does not have relations with him or accept him as a spouse.

In contrast to Byron, Joe Brown (Lucas Burch) is an Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and, until recently,
irresponsible man. He has abandoned Lena and even changed Catholics." The group was formed at the end of the Civil War to
his name in an attempt to hide from her. He and Joe Christmas intimidate Southern African Americans—and any whites who
are engaging in the illegal act of selling alcohol. The reader will would help them—and to deprive them of their civil rights. In
recall that the novel takes place during the period of this chapter, the KKK threatened Hightower's (black) cook and
Prohibition (1919–33). assaulted him. They function almost as a side note within the
text, notably because they were not an atypical presence in
the post-war South. They are, in context, a more violent version
Chapter 3 of the town's censure of Hightower as a result of his wife's
scandalous death. Hightower did not bend to the town's will,
and he woke to a note tied to a brick "commanding him to get
Summary out of town by sunset and signed K.K.K." When he didn't obey,
he was tied up and beaten until he was unconscious.
This chapter introduces Reverend Gail Hightower, a disgraced

minister whose wife "went bad" and was killed or committed
suicide in Memphis. He's fallen on hard times because of the Chapter 4
scandal created by his wife. The next section of the chapter
shifts to Byron Bunch, who recalls wondering what the D.D.
after the reverend's name meant. Byron recalls more of Summary
Hightower's history and of his wife's history and decline. She
left for extended stretches of time, and one day she started Byron Bunch and Reverend Gail Hightower continue to talk. In
shrieking during services. Mrs. Hightower was put in a the process Byron shares what he knows: that Joe Brown
sanatorium. Briefly following her release she was a model (Lucas Burch) and Joe Christmas live in a cabin on the Burden
minister's wife. Then she began vanishing again. Eventually she property and that Christmas is having relations with Joanna
either jumped or fell from a hotel window in Memphis, where Burden. Byron also tells how he put Lena Grove up at the
she had been staying with another man. The town tried to fire boardinghouse where he lodges and that he's having feelings
Hightower, but he refused initially. The town's hostility included toward her. He reveals that Joe Christmas is part black. Byron
threats against his black cook by the Ku Klux Klan, as well as a then relates events at the Burden house, which was the source
beating suffered by Hightower at the hands of the KKK. The of the smoke Lena Grove saw when she first entered
chapter closes with Byron showing up to see Hightower. Jefferson. He wasn't there, but Byron relates how a passing
countryman saw smoke coming from the house. He ran inside
and found Joe Brown drunk. Brown tried to distract the man
Analysis from going upstairs, but the countryman went upstairs anyway
and found Miss Burden, her "head had been cut pretty near
The reference to the Ku Klux Klan in this chapter is as if for off." Brown reported that this was done by Joe Christmas, who
background information. The topic of race is central to the had been living with Miss Burden "like man and wife" for 3
novel. The reader cannot miss the use of racist language, years. When Brown first learned about Christmas's relations
violence toward African American characters, and the hostility with Miss Burden, Christmas threatened him. Brown is now
Joe Christmas exhibits because of his belief that he is of mixed helping the sheriff's men hunt Joe Christmas. Byron ends his
ancestry. The overt details of racial inequality are revelations by telling Hightower that he's not yet told Lena
overwhelming in the book, but the matter-of-factness of the Grove any of these things
telling about it is also noteworthy.
The Ku Klux Klan is the oldest hate group in America, and it

Analysis
remains active today. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes
that the KKK was formed in 1865. Over the last century and a The Faulknerian style of narration is particularly obvious here.
half, in addition to black Americans the group has "attacked Byron tells Hightower about what happened at the Burden

house, as well as the romantic history between Burden and woods and exits to encounter a group of black men and
Christmas. Byron Bunch was not present at the murder, the women—who think he is white. He thinks about the razor in his
fire, or the romance. He was not a confidante of either Burden pocket and listens to the courthouse clock, which is 2 miles
or Christmas, yet he relates these current and past events as if away. He does this at 10, 11, and 12 o'clock as he sits outside
they are factually accurate. The reader expecting a true and Miss Burden's house.
accurate accounting of "facts" of the back story will not find
them easily because of Faulkner's style here. To piece
together the events in Light in August may require reading the Analysis
novel more than once. Additionally, noting the character who is
relaying the information and his relationship to the situation Here, the narrative repeats some of what the reader had
may help—or raise useful questions in interpreting the plot. learned in the previous chapter. This is a part of Faulkner's
storytelling style. The important details that Byron Bunch
Here, Byron is speaking of an unmarried couple: Burden and provided are validated from the point of view of Joe Christmas.
Christmas who were together as if "man and wife." He, This establishes Byron as a more reliable voice within the
however, is staying with Lena Grove (an unmarried woman). He novel. Christmas was intimate with Joanna Burden. Christmas
is not "with her" in intimate ways. Moreover, Lena and Joe recalls that he would "take his sure way through the darkness
Brown are of the same race. The topic of miscegenation, or to her bed. Sometimes she would be awake and waiting and
race mixing, underlies the public reaction to Burden and she would speak his name." There is no mistaking the
Christmas. Joanna Burden was an abolitionist. Earlier (Chapter truthfulness of Byron's version of the intimate nature of the
2) Byron says of Joanna, that "she is a Yankee ... They say she relationship between Burden and Christmas.
is still mixed up with niggers. Visits them when they are sick,
like they was white." He adds that "folks don't ever go out Further, in the prior chapter Byron notes that Miss Burden's
there" because of this, except for Joe Christmas and Joe head was "cut pretty near off." The reader will easily see a clue
Brown. While Byron is not saying such things here to that the murder was by Christmas's hand as there are
Hightower, he did say them to Lena when describing Joanna references to his pocket knife and using it "with the cold and
Burden. bloodless deliberation of a surgeon" to remove buttons that a
woman had sewn on his clothes. Also in this chapter Christmas
is noted, pointedly, as removing several items "from the floor
Chapter 5 beneath his cot." Those items are a magazine with picture of
"young women in underclothes or pictures of men in the act of
shooting one another," as well as his razor, brush, and shaving
soap. At this time the razor that he would likely have had is
Summary what modern readers would think of as a straight razor.
The chapter opens with a recounting of some of the same

information that Byron Bunch shared about Joe Christmas,
specifically that Christmas and Joe Brown have a physical Chapter 6
altercation. After that Christmas goes and stands outside
Joanna Burden's house. He remembers that when he was
sexually aroused, he would go into her darkened house and to Summary
her bed. He sleeps 2 hours, waking at dawn, and returns to the
cabin where Joe Brown is still sleeping. He gathers a few The chapter opens with one of the most iconic lines from all of
things (including a few magazines) and leaves, only to fall Faulkner's novels: "Memory believes before knowing
asleep again in the woods. He digs up 6 metal tins of whiskey remembers." The narrator tells of Joe Christmas at 5 years old,
and spills the whiskey onto the ground. Then, at 7:00 p.m., he is in an orphanage. The boy is hiding behind a curtain in Miss
in town. Two hours later he walks through "the negro section, Atkin's room after stealing and eating some of her toothpaste.
Freedman Town" and then to the part of town where "the He continues to eat more and more of it as he listens to the
houses of white people" are. He walks again, this time through woman, a dietitian, and her companion, a young doctor.

Ultimately Joe vomits from eating the toothpaste. Miss Atkins decided that someone who was one-eighth African American
is furious and calls him a "little rat" and "little nigger bastard." was considered black.
The woman worries for 3 days and then asks him, "are you
going to tell?" He cannot figure why he would tell that he stole The question that the adult Joe Christmas has wrestled with
toothpaste and vomited. She gives him a dollar to keep silent for years is reflective of societal fixations on ethnicity that
and that "next month maybe I'll give you another one." He dominated the South in the time of the novel (and since). Joe, a
refuses, saying he doesn't want more, and she mistakenly young child, is abandoned, mistreated, and hated due to a
thinks he's going to tell. suspicion that he is of mixed ancestry.
Miss Atkins approaches the janitor, noting that he has watched Faulkner also introduces the question of religious "tolerance"
the child for 5 years. (The janitor is unnamed at this point in the at this point in the novel. Simon McEachern is strict, but that
novel. Later it is revealed that he is Doc Hines, Joe Christmas's manifests as a continuation of a lack of affection in Joe
grandfather.) After a tense conversation in which the janitor Christmas's young life. The reader might find it useful to make
remarks on her "womanfilth" and that no one "can hurry the note of McEachern's actions for later comparison with Doc
Lord God," the dietitian leaves. She knows Joe is black and Hines (Joe Christmas's biological grandfather, who at this time
decides to tell the matron of the orphanage so the boy will be is introduced as the "janitor" at the orphanage).
sent away because of his race.
The dietitian is in her room when the janitor comes in, saying Chapter 7
more hateful things about women. He asks if she has told the
matron that Joe is black. He says if she has, Joe will be sent to
the orphanage "for niggers." In the morning the janitor and Joe
Summary
are both gone. They are found, however, and the boy is
returned to the orphanage. Not long after he is adopted by Mr.
The story resumes when Joe Christmas is 8. He is whipped 10
McEachern, who explains that he will "find food and shelter
times with the strap by his adoptive father, Simon McEachern,
and the care of Christian people," but that "sloth and idle
for not learning his catechism—then 10 times again, and 10
thinking" are abominable. He tells the boy that his name is now
times yet again. Joe passes out, and when he wakes Mr.
Joe McEachern not Joe Christmas.
McEachern asks him to come pray. Neither of them has eaten
yet that day. Later Mrs. McEachern brings Joe food, which he
initially rejects until she says that Mr. McEachern hadn't sent it.
Analysis He stands, walks to the corner, and dumps it. An hour after she
leaves he goes and eats "like a savage, like a dog."
Faulkner's nonlinear storytelling is readily apparent here. Joe
Christmas, who is in his mid-30s in the current time of the Joe is 14 in the next section. A young black girl meets Joe and
novel, is a child in this current chapter. The reader has ample 4 other boys at a shed. The others take turns in the shed with
reasons to know that the adult Joe is a murderer and has been her. At Joe's turn, he begins kicking her and hitting her
committing what would have been considered an immoral act viciously. The other 4 boys stop him. Afterward, when they
at the time. There were also laws preventing marriage between part, one of them says, "See you tomorrow at church, Joe." Joe
races. In the 1920s in Mississippi it was a felony—with returns home late to find Mr. McEachern waiting with the strap
imprisonment for life—for an African American to marry a white because Joe has failed to do his evening chores.
person. (This 1865 law was expanded in 1906 to include
Asians.) These "anti-miscegenation" laws were not challenged A few years later when Joe is 18, and almost the size of
until 1967. At that time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in McEachern, Joe sells a heifer he has been raising and lies
Loving v. Virginia that laws prohibiting marriage between races about it to Mr. McEachern. Mr. McEachern punches Joe. After
in various states were unconstitutional. Moreover, while accepting the first 2 blows, Joe stops him. Later, inside the
modern readers might realize that there is no reason that house, Joe hears the way Mrs. McEachern attempts to cover
people of different races should not marry or have children for Joe. The section ends with Joe hearing, "KNEEL DOWN,
together, that was not the case in the 1920s. In 1890 it was WOMAN. Ask grace and pardon of God; not of me."

In the final section of the chapter Joe recalls his relationship her death. This division in the representation of women
with Mrs. McEachern, who cares for him and shares her secret continues in the next chapter as the narration continues to
about her small tin of hidden money. He remembers her explore Joe Christmas's history.
bathing him and bringing food to him. However, he believes
that "she was trying to make [him] cry," and that if she had,
"they would have had" him—presumably referring to the ability Chapter 8
to manipulate him.
Summary
Analysis
Joe Christmas slips out his window and retrieves his hidden,
Faulkner's depiction of women is often deemed problematic by
new suit in the stable. He realizes Mr. McEachern knows about
modern critics. Women are often represented as mother
it. Still he dresses in the dark, leaves, and walks up the lane
figures, caretaking and sexless, or sexualized and dangerous.
where he will meet a car. He hears it approach. It is driven by
In Light in August that is abundantly clear. At this point the
Bobbie Allen, a waitress whom he met 6 months before when
reader has seen numerous damaging representations of
he was in the restaurant with Mr. McEachern. For 6 months he
women in the child Joe's life: Miss Atkins, the dietitian, at the
had not gone to the diner again, and when Joe sees her again,
orphanage (sexual and deceitful), the young black woman
it's spring. He's 18. He has a dime from Mr. McEachern, and he
(raped and subjected to a violent rage by the teenaged Joe
goes to the diner where he orders pie and coffee. He cannot
Christmas), and the mother figure who tries to nurture Joe but
afford both, so he sends the coffee back. When the blonde
is unable to truly help him. Further, Joe sees Mrs. McEachern's
woman at the counter—the proprietor's wife, Mame
offers of kindness as a ploy.
Confrey—questions Bobbie about the coffee, Bobbie lies,
The narrator notes the violence in Joe's behavior when he saying it was her fault: she misunderstood the order. Afterward
enters the shed where the young woman has just had sex with he sees Mr. McEachern who has purchased a heifer for him.
his friends. The violence is not atypical. The reader will recall Joe thinks that the cow is not a gift but a threat. A month later
that when Joe thought of being with Joanna in Chapter 5, he Joe returns to the diner to give Bobbie the nickel he owed her
considered that sometimes he would "take her as hard and as for the coffee. Bobbie isn't there and the proprietor refuses the
brutally before she was good awake." His violence against nickel. Outside Joe sees Bobbie, and they talk.
women did not begin with Joanna. It does culminate with her
Faulkner now jumps to another scene 4 years before in which
murder, however, as these aspects of his history portend.
Joe and his friends talk about girls. The boy who had arranged
This troubling representation of women is not simply an aspect the meeting with the girl in the shed observes that "they all
of Joe Christmas's character; it is an aspect of Faulkner's body want to ... but sometimes they can't," a reference to their
of work. Specifically in Light in August the reader can see it in menstrual cycles. The boy explains in detail, though not
the depictions of the two women who have been pregnant accurately. So Joe learned about menstrual cycles and it
outside of marriage. This pattern will be continued in the story upsets him, and he has trouble accepting it, and then he
of Joe's biological mother as the novel progresses. forgets about it.
By stepping back into the novel's present timeline, the reader Joe is now meeting Bobbie for a date. Bobbie tries to explain
sees two opposing representations of women: the pregnant that she is ill; she's forgotten "the day of the month." After she
Lena Grove and the sexualized Joanna Burden. Lena is kind explains her meaning to him Joe runs away and vomits. They
and asks only for the smallest of things; she is a mother willing meet again the next Monday and go into the woods to have
to walk for days and weeks to unite her family. She is not sex. Thereafter Joe begins to steal from Mrs. McEachern's
sexual, aside from a pregnancy that happened when she hidden money.
trusted the wrong man. Joanna Burden, however, has been

In the final pages of the chapter, the diner owners, Max and
having an illegal, immoral relationship. She lives in seclusion,
Mame Confrey, tease Bobbie about "coming all the way down
carrying out a furtive sexual relationship with Joe that results in
here from Memphis. Bringing it all the way down here to give it

away" to Joe. She points out that she's with Joe on her own
time, not theirs. Joe and Bobbie are lovers for a month before
Summary
he sees her naked, and while they are there naked, he tells her,
Simon McEachern lies awake in bed, thinking about Joe's suit.
"I think I got some nigger blood in me." She doesn't believe him.
He sees Joe get in a car, so he saddles a horse and follows
Joe sees her at the house where she lives with Max and Mame
him to a schoolhouse where there's a dance. He sees Joe
Confrey. Several weeks later Joe goes to the house where
Christmas and Bobbie Allen and approaches, telling her, "Away,
Bobbie lives and sees a man in her room. He doesn't see her
Jezebel! ... Away, harlot!" McEachern starts striking at Joe, who
for 2 weeks, and when he does, he strikes her, but she
hits him with a chair. Bobbie is furious, screaming, flailing as
comforts him and explains that she's a prostitute. When she
people at the dance try to hold her. He goes after them with
says she thought he knew, he responds, "I reckon I didn't." Now
the chair, and they release Bobbie and back away. "I said I
that he's realized Bobbie is a prostitute, he begins to spend
would kill him some day!" Joe cries. Bobbie has fled the room
more time with her, drinking and smoking. However, he is sure
and gotten into her car. Joe follows and tells her to leave, that
to be home before daylight so he can "get into the house
he will see her back in town, but she is furious at him as well
before he was caught."
and strikes at him, pounding him in the face.
As Bobbie drives off, Joe takes McEachern's horse and rides

Analysis home. He takes Mrs. McEachern's money and goes to town to
Bobbie. He is stopped by Max Confrey and another man, who
Here, again, the division of women into pure and impure ask if Joe killed a man. Joe says he doesn't know but is there
continues. When Joe Christmas first sees Bobbie with another to get Bobbie, that he "went home to get the money to get
man, he reacts by striking her repeatedly. He had thought she married." He gives Bobbie the money, and she tosses it and
was pure, and his discovery of her with another man shocks tells the others that Joe's not white. The conversation falls into
him and prompts his violence. But then he discovers she is a italicized snippets: "Is he really a nigger? He don't look like one"
prostitute, and he adjusts rapidly to this new information. and "We'll see if his blood is black." They beat him until a
Apparently, it no longer bothers him that she has sex with woman stops them.
other men because, after all, she's impure, a prostitute.
The issue of sexuality as abhorrent and disgusting is drawn in

vivid detail, and the imagery is notably unsettling. Upon hearing
Analysis
about menstruation, Joe imagines that he sees "a diminishing
The backstory of Joe's life isn't only his story. Joe is a product
row of suavely shaped urns." Further, none of the urns are
of the events that happened in his life. He was
"perfect." Instead "each one was cracked and from each crack
apprehended—still barely a man—by his religiously zealous
there issued something liquid, deathcolored, and foul." These
adoptive father. McEachern calls Bobbie Allen a "harlot" and
images of smooth, bleeding vessels fill Joe with horror. His
"Jezebel." He responds to the sight of Joe at the dance with
response is to vomit.
violence.
The fear and disgust and violence associated with female
The reader can easily see how violence affected Joe and
sexuality is extreme in this particular chapter. And it gives the
shaped his personality both as a young adult and later in his
backstory that explains Joe Christmas's violence as an adult
life. Readers must also consider the statement Joe made as an
when he kills and nearly decapitates his lover, Joanna Burden.
adult in Chapter 5. He is walking through a white neighborhood
Readers might reasonably conclude that Joe's fear of women
and observes 4 people playing cards on a veranda, peacefully
and views of sex are steps that lead to that act.
enjoying a "trivial" game. He thinks that such a peaceful
interlude is all he wanted and isn't "a whole lot to ask."
Chapter 9 Here in Chapter 9, Joe has found someone, Bobbie, who gives
him affection rather than violence. She is older and a
prostitute, but he wanted family and peace, an ordinary life. It is
then no wonder that Joe reacts as he does when McEachern

interrupts the dance, calling Bobbie names and then striking He also has a relationship with a very dark-skinned black
out at Joe. His rebuff by Bobbie adds insult to injury, and the woman who cannot help him to identify as an African
beating that follows further demoralizes him. American.
Chapter 10 Chapter 11
Summary Summary
The chapter picks up where the last one ended. Joe Christmas This chapter continues chronologically from the last one. Joe
remembers a blond woman putting a banknote in his pocket Christmas lives in the cabin adjacent to the big house. He
before she left. Eventually Joe gets up and goes "toward the recalls that although Miss Joanna Burden appeared to be no
door, his hands out before him like a blind man or a more than 30, later she told him she was 40. The narration
sleepwalker." The narrator notes that after "that night the notes that "even after a year" when Joe saw her, "it would be
thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners on Saturday afternoon or Sunday or when he would come to
and changes of scene." Joe's life from then until years later is the house for the food." They did not talk much and when they
summarized as a series of rides—on trains, trucks, and did, they were like strangers despite their physical intimacy. He
wagons—as he grows from 20 to 25 and 30. He travels to learns about the work she does via her correspondence of
"Oklahoma and Missouri and as far south as Mexico" and then "advice, business, financial and religious, to the presidents and
returns north to Chicago and Detroit. The narrator tells of Joe faculties and trustees, and ... alumnae, of a dozen negro
both being with a white woman unmoved by his confession that schools." The narration recounts the first time he went to
he thinks he is black and living with a black woman "who Burden's bedroom and had relations with her. He thought that
resembled an ebony carving" and trying to "breathe into afterward he would be sent away, but he is not. Come spring
himself" the essence of being black. he "went to work." The following September, he returns to the
cabin one day to find her there, waiting to talk.
Finally Joe arrives one afternoon in a small town in Mississippi.
There he learns of the woman in the big house, Miss Joanna The narration shifts to the Burden family history, related by
Burden, who is looked after by "colored folks around here." He Joanna to Joe. Calvin Burden was the youngest son of a
settles in town and goes into Burden's house one night. Upon minister, Nathaniel Burden. Calvin's son, also called Nathaniel,
seeing him, she is unafraid. She says, "If it is just food you want, ran away. When he returned, he brought with him a young
you will find that." Spanish wife and infant son. The infant son was Joanna's
brother, although not by the same mother. The boy grew up
and was killed 14 years before Joanna was born. There was a
Analysis quarrel, it seems. "He was killed ... by an ex-slaveholder and
Confederate soldier named Sartoris, over a question of negro
The novel skips over many years of Joe's life. Instead, its focus voting." Joanna recounts her father taking her to the family
is his foundational experiences with women. These include the graveyard when she was a child and speaking of "the white
deceitful woman at the orphanage, his weak mother, the young race's doom and curse," which was black men and women.
woman in the shed whom he beats, his reaction when he learns
about menstruation, and his rejection by a prostitute. All of They discuss why her father didn't murder the man who
these experiences lead the story back to Jefferson, murdered her brother, and Joe says he would have done so. In
Mississippi, where Joe Christmas encounters Joanna Burden, the dark, Miss Burden then asks Joe, "You don't have any idea
the woman he will murder 3 years later. who your parents were?" He replies that he doesn't, but that he
knows "one of them was part nigger." She pressed, asking,
The narrator does make a point of detailing Joe's sexual "How do you know that?" He has no answer save, "If I'm not,
encounters with both white and black women. He continues to damned if I haven't wasted a lot of time."
see prostitutes and to occasionally be beaten by other patrons.

sees her "once more within the next two months." Around this
Analysis time Joe invites Joe Brown (Lucas Burch) to live in the cabin
with him.
For all the novel's focus on Joe Christmas's race, he is
unprepared in this chapter for Joanna Burden's unanswerable Christmas returns to the cabin one night to find a letter from
question. At the same time she is asking this question, she is Joanna Burden on his bed and is relieved. He thinks, "It will be
sharing her own family history. She knows hers: they are like it was before." After a few words with Brown, Christmas
"Yankees." In Chapter 2, Byron Bunch says of Joanna, "she is a goes to the house to see Joanna. Joe Brown follows, and they
Yankee ... They say she is still mixed up with niggers. Visits have an altercation. Brown disappears into the dark. Upon
them when they are sick, like they was white." seeing Joanna, Joe Christmas discovers that his relief was
premature. She has plans for him to go to school, which he will
Joanna is well aware that she is not accepted in Jefferson or
not have to pay for because he is black. She wants him to
the South. She tells Joe, "They hated us here. We were
study in Memphis with her lawyer and then "take charge of all
Yankees. Foreigners. Worse than foreigners: enemies." As she
the legal business." Joe asks, "Tell niggers that I am a nigger
speaks to him, she tells him the people there thought that her
too?" They argue, and Christmas hits her. The section ends
family was "stirring up the negroes to murder and rape" and
with Joanna saying, "Maybe it would be better if we both were
"threatening white supremacy."
dead."
Joanna reveals to Joe—and the reader—that she was raised to
In the following scene, Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden are
believe that the "white race" was "doomed and cursed." That
at a hostile point in their relationship. She no longer leaves
curse was a "black shadow already falling upon them before
meals for Joe, and she pressures him to kneel and pray. He sits
they drew breath." Significantly, however, she freely tells her
outside all night watching the house and "saying to himself I
history to Joe herself. In contrast, Hightower's, Joe's, and
had to do it already in the past tense; I had to do it." Again she
Lena's histories have all been revealed by the narrator or by
asks him to kneel. This time he sees "her right hand come forth
others. What Joanna reveals is a motivation for her actions that
from beneath the shawl." She's holding a gun. The section ends
is self-serving and—like Joe's—influenced by her own
abruptly as he is "watching when the cocked shadow of the
upbringing. Joanna's father told her that she "must raise the
hammer flicked away."
shadow [negroes] with you. But you can never lift it to your
level." Joe Christmas is not accepted here any more than he In the final pages of the chapter Joe leaves, stops a car, and
was during his childhood. He is part of the burden that, in an gets in. The couple inside are nervous, and the car is driven
example of verbal irony, Joanna Burden must carry. quickly. Eventually he gets out and realizes he is holding the
"ancient heavy pistol" in his right hand, and this is why the
couple was afraid of him. After noticing that there were 2
Chapter 12 loaded chambers "for her and for me," he throws the pistol
away.
Summary
Analysis
The story continues on a linear path as it recounts Joe
Christmas's history with Joanna Burden. The narrator In reading this chapter, which continues the description of the
describes a "second phase" of their relationship. Joe events leading up to the murder of Joanna Burden, readers
Christmas "watch[es] her pass through every avatar of a must keep in mind the racial environment of the 1920s and
woman in love." She has fits of jealousy and sets up a secret 1930s. The Jim Crow laws enacted between 1877 and the
place to hide letters and notes. The third phase of their 1950s enforced racial segregation in the South. One of the
relationship centers around her announcement, "just after most well-known of these was the Plessy v. Ferguson decision
Christmas," that she is pregnant. Joe expects her to pressure by the Supreme Court in 1896. That decision supported
him to marry her, but that does not happen. Instead she segregation by allowing states and local governments to
explains her plan to hand over her business affairs to him. He provide "separate but equal" facilities for black and white

people. The purpose of these laws, of course, was to protect and begin a hunt for Joe Christmas.
white supremacy. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision was not
reversed until 1954. Other laws prohibited white and black The narration now shifts to Byron Bunch and Reverend Gail
people from marrying. These laws were not reversed until a Hightower. The two men discuss Byron's plan to relocate Lena
decade later, in 1967. Thus Joanna's relationship with Joe puts Grove, who is nearing her due date. Hightower notes Byron's
both characters at risk. Joanna is a Yankee and a willing interest in Lena. Byron regrets that he accidentally revealed
advocate for raising up "the shadows," but she has also been Joe Brown's identify to Lena. Lena decides she wants to go
instructed by her father, as related in Chapter 11, that "you can out to the cabin at the Burden place where Brown and
never lift it to your level." Christmas had been staying. Lena considers it Brown's home,
so it's hers as well. After settling Lena in the cabin, Byron
The violence that ends Joe and Joanna's relationship is an returns to Hightower's house. Hightower asks about hiring a
outgrowth of cultural norms. The murder continues a pattern of doctor, and Byron says he hasn't yet. After Byron leaves,
violence detailed over numerous chapters describing Joe's Hightower thinks "I should not have got out of the habit of
past. Joanna's suggestion that Joe attend what is, in essence, prayer." He goes to the wall of books in his study and selects a
a "separate but equal" college and work for her implicitly states volume of Tennyson.
that he is less than her—not a man to marry, but an employee.
It is a rejection of any possibility that they can take their
relationship to a new level. Analysis
So there are several paradoxes at play in the relationship The response of the local people to Joanna Burden's violent
between Joe and Joanna. They explain Joanna's words, death confirms that it was the only possible outcome of her
"Maybe it would be better if we both were dead," and her relationship with Joe Christmas. Joanna's suggestion that she
attempt to kill both Joe and herself. could hand her business to Joe was tragically flawed. Joe's
expectation that she might insist on marriage was equally
flawed. She was an outsider in Jefferson, despite a lifetime
Chapter 13 there. Her roots as a Yankee were too significant to the
community—as were her dealings with African Americans.
The people do not appear appalled by the violence done to

Summary Joanna. She has—just as Hightower did in the past—behaved in
ways that the people of Jefferson and the South in general do
This chapter shifts back in time to the fire at the Burden house.
not endorse. She has violated both laws and community mores.
People have gathered to stare at the body of Joanna Burden.
Additionally she is a Yankee. Byron Bunch, for all his positive
The narrator says the "casual Yankees and the poor whites
traits, did not characterize her positively when speaking of her
and even the southerners who had lived for a while in the
to Lena. When the fire is first mentioned in the novel, Byron
north" looked at the corpse and hoped she had been sexually
suggests, "folks in this town will call it a judgment on her"
violated "at least once before her throat was cut and at least
because she is a Yankee. Her death is followed by a fiery
once afterward." While the sheriff's men are containing the
conflagration in both a literal condemnation of her actions, as
scene, they notice the cabin and ask who lives there. Someone
the house burns around her, and a symbolic one.
says one of the black men must have lived there, but the black
man who is questioned about this says "two white men" lived in
the cabin. Another man says the residents were Joe Christmas
and Joe Brown. The authorities find Joanna Burden's Chapter 14
instructions to contact her lawyer in Memphis, and her nephew
offers a $1,000 reward for capturing her murderer.
Summary
Back in Jefferson, Joe Brown goes to see the sheriff, hoping to
collect the reward. He declares Joe Christmas to be the killer. The deputy tells the sheriff that there's "somebody out there in
The next morning, a posse with dogs shows up at the cabin that cabin." He explains that a woman from Alabama is living

there and is soon to have a baby. Byron Bunch, he says, is their story is the arrest of Joe Christmas, who happens to be
camped there and looking after her. One of the men who had their grandson. Mrs. Hines goes to the jail, hoping to see Joe.
been living there is the father. "It's Christmas, is it?" the sheriff She is denied, so the couple travels by train to Jefferson.
asks. The deputy answers that it's not, it's Joe Brown, whose Amidst this is the revelation that Doc Hines is religiously
real name is Lucas Burch. They decide not to tell Brown that extreme. The chapter closes with him shouting, "Bitchery and
Lena is there. abomination! Abomination and bitchery!"
A black man arrives to tell the sheriff about a "man in white"

whose "face was not black" who showed up at a revival Analysis
meeting. The man, Joe Christmas, acted violently, striking
people and cursing loudly. Joe knocked over a "seventy year Mr. and Mrs. Hines are parallels to the McEacherns. The
old grandpappy" and his grandson, Roz, a big man, had to be biological grandparents of Joe Christmas are in no way
restrained from going after him. Roz's grandfather left superior to the couple that raised him. In both cases the man is
immediately after the incident and ran to report the incident to a religious zealot. Whereas Mr. McEachern yelled "harlot" and
the sheriff. "Jezebel" at Bobbie Allen, Mr. Hines is yelling similar terms in a
general sense, to curse Joe's downfall at the hands of a
Joe is still in the building when Roz breaks free. Just as Roz
woman. His curses are perhaps also aimed at his deceased
comes through the door, Joe hits him hard with the leg of a
daughter. Mrs. Hines, however, does demonstrate more
bench, leaving him sprawled and unconscious on the floor.
independence than Mrs. McEachern. She takes charge of
Joe hides out, barely eating and ultimately losing track of time. finding transport to Jefferson after she is denied entrance to
After a week, he catches a ride into Mottstown, which is 30 the jail.
miles from Jefferson.
Readers have encountered detailed accounts about Joe's
childhood and upbringing. It is logical for readers to wonder if
things might have been different if he'd stayed with his
Analysis biological family. Faulkner answers that question here in
presenting these two flawed characters.
The narrative of Light in August is, in true Faulknerian style,
filtered by the perceptions of characters. It is up to the reader
to draw conclusions, including the determination of Joe's racial
identity, which is left deliberately ambiguous. When the Chapter 16
information on Joe's appearance at a revival is brought to the
sheriff, it includes the description of Joe as "the white man."
The description reflects what the black man thinks, and he is Summary
concerned that Roz, a black man, killed Joe. At that time in the
South black men did not stand up to white men; for an African Byron Bunch goes to see Reverend Gail Hightower, waking him
American to murder a white man would be unthinkable. to tell him that Joe Christmas has been arrested and that both
he and Joe Brown are in jail in Jefferson. Hightower
reproaches Byron for keeping Brown and Lena Grove apart.
Chapter 15 Byron then tells him that everyone makes a choice and the
"good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad."
Everyone suffers, he says, including "that other woman." At this
Hightower asks, "That other woman? Another woman? Must
Summary my life after fifty years be violated and my peace destroyed by
two lost women, Byron?" Byron explains that the "other"
Chapter 15 opens by noting, "Christmas was captured in
woman "ain't lost now"; she is Joe Christmas's grandmother.
Mottstown." The narrator also observes that there is "an old
couple named Hines" living there. The chapter explores the Byron then brings Mr. and Mrs. Hines to see Hightower. Mrs.
lives and personality of these two characters. Mixed in with Hines tells their part of the story involving Joe Christmas. Joe

Christmas is their daughter Milly's child. Mrs. Hines says she's What Doc Hines is pursuing for Milly is illegal and dangerous.
there to stop Doc Hines from inciting a lynch mob to kill Joe. He is so opposed to miscegenation that he would risk her life
Doc Hines yells, "It's God's abomination of womanflesh!" Mrs. to end the pregnancy. To make this abundantly clear to the
Hines and Byron explain that Milly slipped out of the house and reader, the novel ties together the pursuit of a doctor for
had sex with a man from the circus. The man said he was "a abortion with Doc Hines going to a revival and expressing
Mexican," but Doc Hines was sure the man had black ancestry. white supremacist sentiments.
Eventually Milly Hines ran away with her lover, but Doc Hines
went after them, killed the man, and brought Milly home. He
tried to find a doctor to perform an abortion, but then he went Chapter 17
into a wild rage and attacked the doctor. He went to another
town, and there he went to a prayer meeting and preached
about white supremacy and brandished a gun—which resulted
Summary
in his being jailed.
This chapter opens on a Sunday night; Lena's child is born the

Doc Hines was released from jail not long before Milly went
next morning. Byron Bunch goes to Reverend Gail Hightower,
into labor. She died in childbirth, and Doc Hines went away,
wakes him, and asks him to come deliver the baby. Byron is on
leaving the baby with Mrs. Hines. Then one day Hines returned
his way to fetch the doctor, but he wants Hightower with Lena
and took the child away, leaving only a note. Hines brought the
just in case. When Byron and the doctor arrive at the cabin,
child to Memphis, where he had taken a job as a janitor at an
they are too late: as they arrive "the doctor heard the infant
orphanage. He left the baby on the doorstep where Joe was
cry." Mr. and Mrs. Hines are there, and Mrs. Hines's mind is
taken in and named Joe Christmas, because he was found on
confused. She believes the mother is her own daughter Milly,
Christmas night. Byron and Mrs. Hines then explain that they
and the child is Joe.
want Reverend Hightower to lie and provide an alibi for Joe
Christmas. Hightower refuses and screams, "Get out of my
Hightower leaves, but he returns and discovers that Byron has
house!"
decided to seek out Joe Brown to tell him about the child's
birth. He also learns that Doc Hines has slipped away and Mrs.
Hines has followed him. Lena is unnerved by the way Mrs.
Analysis Hines has been acting. She reveals that Byron asked her to
marry him, but she refused. Hightower leaves again and learns
The missing pieces of Joe's history are revealed here. Joe was
that Byron quit his job.
the son of an unwed mother. The religious zealotry he
experienced as a child was likely what his mother also
experienced. His teenage experience of sneaking out his
Analysis
window to see Bobbie Allen also paralleled his biological
mother's past. The reader will further note the parallel to Lena
As the novel winds toward its close, Lena Grove gives birth. In
Grove, an unwed mother who went out her brother's window to
this moment there is a keen connection between her story and
meet with Lucas Burch.
that of Joe Christmas. The reader may recall here that Joanna
Burden's father, Nathaniel, was first married to a woman of
This chapter also raises the topic of abortion. According to
Spanish descent. In Chapter 11, when Joanna speaks of her
Katha Pollitt's article "Abortion in American History," in the
father, she notes that it "took him over twelve years to get
1920s, about 15,000 women died every year from illegal
married." He had returned to Kansas with the mother of his
abortions. The procedure had actually been legal until the late
child, Calvin. At this point there have been 3 women in the
1800s when, in 1873, the Comstock Act banned "devices or
novel who were pregnant and unmarried: Lena Grove, Milly
medications for unlawful abortion," among other things. This
Hines, and Nathaniel Burden's first wife.
state of affairs lasted until the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade
decision in 1973. During the interim, abortions were conducted,
but in secrecy and often in unsafe conditions.

Christian reference, the symbolism of the snake from the

Chapter 18 Bible's book of Genesis—representing deceit, evil, and the
introduction of sin to the world—cannot be overlooked.
Summary
Chapter 19
Byron goes to the boardinghouse to settle accounts. He had
no money due, and his things are gathered for him. He then
tells the sheriff that Joe Brown needs to see Lena Grove and
find out about the baby. Byron pretends to be willing to let go
Summary
of Lena and leave town.
The chapter begins with a summary of Joe Christmas's escape
The deputy takes Brown to the cabin where Lena is and sends and how he had "taken refuge" in Hightower's house. Some
him inside—telling him nothing about who waits there. He sees people wondered why he had gone there; others gave an easy
Lena and promptly commences lying, claiming he sent for her answer. "Like to like," they said, referring to what people
and that he'd meant to have the cabin ready for her. Lena regarded as the disgrace and criminality shared by Hightower
mentions, "There is a preacher here. That has already come to and Christmas. A new character, Gavin Stevens, is introduced.
see me." She presses him for plans for the future, and he Stevens, the District Attorney, is from an old Jefferson family
continues to lie. Then he tiptoes to the window and climbs out. and his grandfather was a slave owner. A friend of Stevens
He finds a young black boy to carry a note to the sheriff asking sees the D.A. as he puts Mr. and Mrs. Hines on the train,
for his reward for helping to find Joe Christmas. assuring them, "I'll see that the boy is on the train in the
morning." Stevens's friend, a professor, listens as Stevens
Byron catches up to Brown near the railroad tracks where explains why Christmas went to Hightower's house: he says, "I
Brown intended to wait for his reward to be brought to him. think it was his grandmother." He goes into long detail in which
They fight, at Byron's insistence. Byron expects to lose, and he he says she confused the child born that day and her grandson
does. Brown then hops a train. The chapter closes with Byron in her mind. Ultimately Stevens says that he thinks Mrs. Hines
learning about some "excitement" in Jefferson: "That nigger, "told him about Hightower, that Hightower would save him."
Christmas. They killed him." Stevens goes into a rambling account of what he thinks Joe
did because of his "black blood" and his "white blood." His
"black blood" is blamed for every wrong act, and the "white
Analysis blood" for courageous or good acts.
Much as with the initial revelation of Joanna's death, the first The perspective shifts to Percy Grimm, a 25-year-old captain
revelation of Joe Christmas's death is a simple statement. The in the State national guard. Clearly racist, Grimm believes "the
details are absent. Like the fire, it is merely noted in passing. white race is superior to any and all other races" and "the
American is superior to all other white races." Grimm goes to
Both "pursuits"—Lena Grove's pursuit of Joe Brown and the the American Legion and assembles a group of about 15 or 20
sheriff's pursuit of the fugitive Joe Christmas—have been men to patrol downtown. The sheriff disapproves, but later
resolved. Lena has found Brown, and the sheriff has makes Grimm a "special deputy." When Joe Christmas
apprehended Joe Christmas. Christmas is now dead. Lena's escapes, Grimm pursues him. Eventually Grimm sees
pursuit of Joe Brown, however, is not over. Joe Brown stands Christmas enter Hightower's house. Hightower tries to calm
before her and lies. Lena asks about his promise he made to Grimm, but to no avail. Grimm shoots Joe Christmas repeatedly
be with her, "When will it be, Lucas?" She stresses that she and then castrates him with a butcher knife before he is dead.
was patient before, but she has "a right to worry now" that she He says, "Now you'll let white women alone, even in hell."
has a child. Feeling trapped, Brown leaves the cabin, slipping
out through the window just as Lena did to see him and to
leave her brother's house. Significantly, when Brown leaves, he
moves "almost like a long snake." In a text with so much overt

Analysis Summary
Gavin Stevens, the District Attorney, and his companion, the This chapter is primarily about Reverend Gail Hightower and
professor, represent law and education. Unfortunately they are his memories. He imagines he lives among phantoms, as he
no more reasonable or ethical than Percy Grimm, the other thinks of the people who hold power in his memories. He thinks
character who is introduced here. All 3 men look down on of his grandfather, who was a slave owner, and his father, who
Christmas's race, blaming his blackness for his violence and was an abolitionist "almost before the sentiment had become a
flaws. Stevens, for example, describes how it was Joe's black word." His father didn't fight in the Civil War and instead
blood that caused him to seek out Hightower. And somewhat became a doctor. Hightower thinks of the "negro woman, the
later, he comments that "the black blood failed him again ... He slave" who stayed at the house after his grandfather's death,
did not kill the minister." Finally, in Christmas's last stand, he refusing to believe the man was dead. He recalls his romance
tells how Christmas "defied the black blood for the last time" with and marriage to his wife, a minister's daughter, and his
when he allowed Grimm to shoot him although he held a failures as a husband. Then he recalls the people of Jefferson
loaded pistol in his hand. Stevens's mind appears to work in a with an elongated image of a wheel—a "sandclutched wheel of
manner not unlike Percy Grimm's. thinking [that] turns on with the slow implacability of a medieval
torture" device. Beneath this wheel is the "wrenched and
Grimm, the novel's most extreme racist, represents both broken sockets of his spirit, his life." He thinks of Joe
Southern racism and the nationalist ideals that were flourishing Christmas, Byron Bunch, and Lena Grove. The chapter closes
at the time of the novel's writing. The reader will recall that as he hears "the wild bugles and the clashing sabres and the
Light in August is set in the 1920s, but it was published in 1932. dying thunder of hooves."
In the 1930s, the publisher William Randolph Hearst was
opposing President Franklin Roosevelt with the stance of
"America First," arguing in favor of the nationalism popular in Analysis
Germany and Italy. The phrase had originated with President
Woodrow Wilson, who had argued for "America First" when Reverend Gail Hightower's reflections serve as a reminder to
asking for Congress to declare war on Germany in World War I. the reader that history matters, including family history.
Both the racism and anti-miscegenation stance that pervades Hightower's history is complicated. His family owned slaves but
the book and the nationalism that Grimm espouses were also had abolitionist tendencies. He is a true Southerner,
issues with which Faulkner's readers were quite familiar. wrestling with questions of race, slavery, and war. He weighs
all this history in Chapter 20. He has been a peripheral figure in
The two most shocking acts of violence in the novel are tied to
many lives, both in his years as a minister and in the lives of
miscegenation: Joanna Burden's near-beheading by Joe
Byron Bunch, Lena Grove, Joe Christmas, Mrs. Hines, and Joe
Christmas and the castration of Christmas. The virulent racism
Brown.
that Percy Grimm embodies leads to the most brutal violence
in this already dark novel: he castrates Joe while the man is still Hightower was present at the brutal death of Joe Christmas at
alive so he cannot have intimate relations with any "white the hands of a racist. He cautioned mercy—and yet he was
women." This punishment is exacted even though Joanna aware that Joe Christmas was a murderer. The chapter closes
Burden was a "Yankee" ostracized in her adopted town. with his familial memory of "wild bugles and ... clashing sabres."
Whiteness alone placed her higher on Grimm's hierarchy of The image calls to mind the Civil War, which tore apart families
worthiness than Joe Christmas. and was still fresh on the minds of Southerners decades after
its end. The many "phantoms" that fill his mental pondering
recall the scope of the novel. Light in August has repeatedly
Chapter 20 looked to the past to explain present events. On a smaller,
more personal scale, this is precisely what Hightower himself is
doing—examining his own life through the lens of history.

Light in August Study Guide Quotes 27
Chapter 21 g Quotes
Summary "I have come from Alabama: a fur

piece. All the way from Alabama a-
This final chapter opens with a "furniture repairer and dealer
who recently made a trip into Tennessee." He tells his wife he walking."
gave Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, and the baby a ride into
Tennessee. He notes that the two are unmarried and that the — Lena Grove, Chapter 1
baby is "not yearling size." He lets them spend the night in "the
bare boards in the truck." The driver hears them talking and
learns they don't know which way Joe Brown ran. He also Lena's note on her travel here is echoed in the final lines of the
hears Byron tell Lena that they "might travel on like this from novel. Here she is coming to Mississippi from Alabama, and at
one truck to another and one state to another for the rest of the end she has left Mississippi for Tennessee. At the onset,
their lives" without finding Brown. Lena listens "placid and she is pregnant and alone. At the close she is with Byron
calm," and Byron "[gets] up from the log and walk[s] away." Bunch and her baby and in a wagon. Thus, the novel moves
Later that night Byron creeps into the truck, and the man says through Lena's life in a circular fashion. This quote gives
he "heard one kind of astonished sound she made." Lena readers an idea of Lena's voice and character—she's poor,
rebuffs Byron and chastises him for almost waking the baby. poorly educated, and her life has been hard.
Byron leaves, but the next day he returns to join her—"standing
at the side of the road when we come around the curve." They
continue on, and the novel closes with Lena saying with mild "That's why they dip snuff and
surprise, "We ain't been coming from Alabama but two months,
and now it's already Tennessee."
smoke and want to vote."
— Armstid, Chapter 1
Analysis
Armstid is thinking about women after he has offered Lena
The novel's main characters have functioned outside Grove a place to sleep at his home and she has replied that
mainstream society, and Faulkner has brought their stories to a she "wouldn't be beholden." The right to vote had only just
close. Joe Christmas, Joanna Burden, Reverend Hightower's been granted to women in the United States in 1920 with the
wife, and Milly Hines are all dead. Each of these characters had passing of the 19th Amendment. The world is changing, he is
sexual relationships outside of marriage. saying, and he doesn't appear certain it is for the better. The
fact that the women in his life also dip snuff and smoke
Lena Grove, however, is the exception. She is alive, with a child,
indicates that the women he knows are very poor and working
and she is unmarried. The novel leaves her largely where she
class.
began—seeking her child's father. She is not promiscuous; she
rebuffs Byron's advances. Motherhood has made her less
sexual. Ending the novel on a hopeful note, she has attained
the facsimile of a traditional family, with a man who stands by "Did you ever hear of a white man
her and her child.
named Christmas?"
— Mooney, Chapter 2
Byron Bunch has just overheard this comment by his foreman,

Mooney. Characters in the novel are regularly confused by Joe

Christmas's identity, particularly his race, which this quote hints For all of Joe's acts of rage and crime, what he sought
at. The world in which he lived insists that his identity and his (according to him) was a home, acceptance, and love. These
race are equivalent, and that his race determines his destiny. things were denied to him from his earliest memories. From
However, Christmas "passes" in an effort to transcend his this point, the novel begins to explore Joe's history from age 5
destiny. to the present. It starts this journey by planting in the readers'
minds this clear expression of what he sought in this world.
Readers will witness the path he took that leads to violent
"It's the dead ones that lay quiet in murder.
one place and don't try to hold

him, that he can't escape from." "Memory believes before knowing
remembers."
— Byron Bunch, Chapter 3
— Narrator, Chapter 6
Faulkner's focus on the past, a hallmark of Southern Literature,
is both personal for his characters and cultural for the
This enigmatic line, often quoted, is reflective of the novel as a
community. Here, it is personal. Byron is speaking with
whole. The history of the major characters is revealed to lesser
Reverend Gail Hightower—who lost his position in town when
degrees in some cases (Lena Grove) or exhaustively in others
he lost his wife. "It's the dead folks that do him the damage,"
(Joe Christmas). This line transitions the reader from the
Byron is thinking.
present day of the novel when Joe Christmas is an adult
murderer to his experiences as a 5-year-old unwanted child in
an orphanage.
"Her head had been cut pretty
near off."
"Each one was cracked and from
— Byron Bunch, Chapter 4 each crack there issued
something liquid, deathcolored,
Joanna Burden was not only murdered, she was savagely
killed. The attack against her nearly decapitated her. There is a and foul."
violence here that raises questions about what could lead a
man to such acts. Light in August does not provide the easy — Narrator, Chapter 8
answer many people of the era might have given by suggesting
that the black race is naturally more violent than the white
At this point in Joe Christmas's young life, he is about to
race. Rather, after this revelation, the text explores Joe
embark on sexual relations with his girlfriend—a prostitute
Christmas's past, allowing the reader to wonder what
named Bobbie Allen. She has just told him about menstruation,
experiences in his past led to this moment.
something that shocks him, although he has heard something
of it before. He runs away, and his imagination raises up this
image of "suavely shaped urns," and vomits. His experience
"'That's all I wanted,' he thought. and reflection on it are part of the novel's exploration of the
'That don't seem like a whole lot to female as both giver of life and harbinger of death.
ask.'"
"I know now that what makes a
— Joe Christmas, Chapter 5

the subject isn't beautiful. And in so doing, it reflects a

fool is an inability to take even his
character's mangled thought process far better than any linear
own good advice." description could.

"It's God's abomination of
This is Joe assessing his situation. He has just taken on Joe womanflesh!"
Brown as a fellow bootlegger and invited him to live in the
cabin. He is now worried about hiding his relationship with
— Doc Hines, Chapter 16
Joanna Burden. He acknowledges to himself at this point that
he is afraid of her.
Doc Hines (Joe's biological grandfather) cries out in fury
against all women and more specifically against his daughter,
Milly, who is Joe's mother. Faulkner's characters in this and
"That's how he finds that he can
others of his novels act in confused and conflicted ways when
bear anything ... That's what is so confronted with women. Joe Christmas experiences it when he
has an opportunity to experience sex for the first time, and
terrible. That he can bear
then beats the young woman instead. He experiences it with
anything." Bobbie Allen and later with Joanna Burden, whom he murders.
— Reverend Gail Hightower, Chapter 13

"A fellow running ... toward a gun
This notion that man can perform and endure more than he ain't got time to worry whether ...
should be able to, more than he thinks he can, is echoed years
later in Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech when he
what he is doing is courage or
remarks on men's capacity to "endure" and a hallmark of cowardice."
tragedy since Greek times. The characters that Faulkner
depicts often are those pressed down by extreme
— Byron Bunch, Chapter 17
circumstances. It is as much a trait of his writing as are his
lengthy sentences and non-linear narratives.
The idea of whether it's courage to act in the moment is
intriguing in light of the speaker. Byron is steadfast. He
protects Lena Grove, and his most radical acts are fighting Joe
"Time, the spaces of light and
Brown and asking Hightower to lie to provide an alibi for Joe
dark, had long since lost any Christmas. Many other spur-of-the-moment actions on the part
of other characters are far less heroic, but this quote examines
orderliness."
whether that is due to the nature of the characters or the
nature of their circumstances.
Joe Christmas is on the run and has just accidentally slept for "Now you'll let white women alone,
hours and has lost all sense of time. He has had to ask
someone what day it is. His sense of time has been erased by
even in hell."
shock, flight, hunger, and sleeplessness. This sort of poetic
phrasing is a mark of much of Faulkner's prose. It conveys — Percy Grimm, Chapter 19
information, but it often does so in a beautiful way even when

Light in August Study Guide Symbols 30
Percy is the extreme manifestation of the anti-miscegenation Joe's experience of the street is that of a long journey that "ran
sentiment that pervaded the United States, especially the into Oklahoma and Missouri and as far south again as Mexico
South, for more than a century. He says this as he enacts and then back north to Chicago and Detroit and then back
brutal violence on Joe Christmas, castrating him as he dies. south again and at last to Mississippi." No matter where he
runs, it's the "same" street.
"Here we ain't been coming from

Alabama but two months, and now Sheep
it's already Tennessee."
The sheep in Light in August is referenced four times in a short
— Lena Grove, Chapter 21
space in Chapter 8. Around the time when Joe Christmas is
becoming involved with the waitress Bobbie Allen, a prostitute,
This statement is the bookend to the opening remark that Lena he shoots a sheep he has "stalked." He then kneels, "his hands
Grove makes about her journey into Mississippi when she in the yet warm blood." Two days later he sees Bobbie, who
expresses mild surprise at the distance she has traveled. It is a cannot have sex because she is menstruating. The sheep is
surprise the reader may feel as well, considering the spiritual again referenced as he "fled backward, past the slain sheep"
distance over which the novel has traversed. It is significant in when Bobbie tells him of menstruation. The sheep, a Christian
that it reflects her character, still steadfast, still calm and symbol of innocence, is dead—as is Joe's innocence.
placid, still in search of her child's father, Joe Brown, but now
accompanied by Byron Bunch, who has offered her marriage
repeatedly.
Fire
l Symbols Fire, like the symbol of the slain sheep in Light in August, is
drawn from Christian imagery. Joanna Burden is a Yankee. Her
family had moved to the South looking for post-war
Streets advantages. Miss Burden lives in solitude, an unmarried woman
who spent 3 years having sexual relations with Joe Christmas.
Her death is followed by a fiery conflagration that is the earthly
equivalent of hellfire and damnation for her "immoral" ways.
The first character to be introduced in the novel is Lena Grove,
The local people come and watch the Burden house burn;
a placid, young, pregnant woman sitting beside a road, or
"Within five minutes after the countryman found the fire, the
street, in the midst of her journey. The narrator notes that "she
people began to gather."
is looking ahead, to where the road curves on and away,
crossslanted with shadows." Her road is the journey of life, and
she continues on it with surety and calm. Lena is unflappable.
She believes she is walking toward something and is certain
she will find it in time.
m Themes
In contrast Joe Christmas has been running from something.
The narrator writes that Joe has been following "one street"
for 15 years, noting that "the thousand streets ran as one
Memory and the Past
street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene."
While Lena has the refrain of a "fur piece" (a long distance),
Perhaps the most well-known line in the novel is "Memory

Light in August Study Guide Themes 31
believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than to find a relationship with a black woman "who resembled an
recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." This line leads ebony carving" and trying to "breathe into himself" the essence
into the chapters recounting the boyhood and teen years that of being black. He tried telling white lovers that he was of
formed Joe Christmas into the man who killed Joanna Burden. mixed ancestry, to various results. Midway into the novel Joe
takes a walk through a white neighborhood and observes a
It is not only Joe Christmas whose memories shape his actions quiet, happy family. "That's all I wanted," he thought. "That don't
in the novel. Both Joanna Burden and Reverend Gail Hightower seem like a whole lot to ask." Throughout his life, all Joe
reveal their histories in the course of the novel. In Hightower's wanted was to belong, but it was forever denied to him.
final chapter in the book—Chapter 20—he expresses his belief
that he is surrounded by "phantoms"—his memories of the Joanna Burden is also shaped by her isolation. When Byron
people in his past. Likewise Joanna Burden is haunted by the Bunch first describes her after her house has been lit on fire,
story of her brother's murder. Joanna says, "He had just turned he tells Lena Grove that "folks in this town will call it a
twenty when he was killed in the town two miles away by an judgment on her" because she is a "Yankee." When Joanna
ex-slaveholder and a Confederate soldier." She didn't know her recounts being a young child and her father taking her to the
brother, so her "memory" is less memory than "past." This is family graveyard, she tells Joe Christmas that her father "hid
true of Hightower's phantoms, as well. He imagines hearing the graves." She explains that he had to do so because
"the wild bugles and the clashing sabres and the dying thunder "someone might see it and happen to remember" the past. As
of hooves." This, too, is family history, not personal memory. they speak further Joanna notes "we were foreigners,
strangers, that thought differently from the people whose
In Joe Christmas's case, the memories that haunt him are his country we had come into without being asked or wanted."
own. However, his family past is as much a factor as his Decades later, she is still treated as an outsider. Her first
memories. His mother was an unwed mother, pregnant by a intimate relationship is with Joe Christmas—and it ends in her
man she claimed was "a Mexican" and whom her father, Doc death and in his arrest and eventual death as well.
Hines, claimed was black. Hines murdered Joe's biological
father, stole the infant Joe, and left him at an orphanage. The
past—both his memories and his familial history—shaped Joe
Christmas's life, just as they did with Hightower and Burden. Race and Identity
The past shaped the experiences that led to tragedy and death
in all of these characters' lives, as they do for all those who live
in Faulkner's South.
Another powerful theme in Light in August is race and identity.
The novel never definitively answers the question of Joe
Christmas's race. Joe claims early on that he is black. His only
Alienation and Isolation proof of this is his personal belief. Eventually when Joanna
Burden questions Joe about his claims, he only says that he
knows that one of his parents was of African descent. She
asks, "How do you know that?" Joe cannot answer. All he can
The theme of alienation is central to Light in August. It is most say is "If I'm not, damned if I haven't wasted a lot of time."
obvious in the character of Joe Christmas. Joe wasn't sure at
any point in his life exactly who, or what, he was. His goal of Earlier encounters Joe had include a woman saying "I thought
finding a place where he belonged arguably drove him to the maybe you were just another wop." (Wop is a racist term for
situation that led him to commit murder and to his violent Italian.) The conversation about Joe when he's working at the
death. As Faulkner's narrative choices demonstrate, examining mill was "Did you ever hear of a white man named Christmas?"
Joe's past helps the reader understand the journey that led to When Joe Brown speaks to the sheriff about the murder and
such an end. Due to a childhood in which he was orphaned, fire at the Burden house, he also references Joe's race,
adopted by a cruel man, and raised with violence to a manhood "Accuse the white man and let the nigger go free." Likewise the
that included a first girlfriend who was a prostitute who woman on the road who saw Joe Christmas "told them about
rejected him, Joe yearned for acceptance. He sought it, trying the white man on the road." Similarly when Joe walks into the

Light in August Study Guide Suggested Reading 32
revival (again while on the run), the narrator notes that the
black men and women there "saw that his face was not black" e Suggested Reading
and elsewhere notes that "they saw that the man was white."
Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. Random, 1984.
Joe's identity and his long search to find where he belongs
drives his life, his choices, and thus the novel. It is a theme Juhasz, Leslie. William Faulkner's Light in August: A Critical
made all the more important because Light in August is set in Commentary. Monarch, 1965.
the South in the early 20th century when questions of race and
identity were being addressed, often with violence and hatred. Kazin, Alfred. "The Stillness of Light in August." Twelve Original
Essays on Great American Novels, edited by Charles Shapiro,
UMI, 2000, pp. 257–83.
The Feminine Ideal McElderry, Bruce R. "The Narrative Structure of Light in

August." College English, vol. 19, no. 5,Feb. 1958, pp. 200–07.
Railton, Stephen. "Mapping Yoknapatawpha." ENAM 3240, U of

The novel draws heavily on Christian allegory, in which female Virginia, n.d.
characters are often depicted either as an Eve or a Mary. Mary
West, Ray B. "Faulkner's Light in August: A View of Tragedy."
is the New Testament's virginal, saintly mother who nurtures all
Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature., vol. 1, no. 1,
of humanity, while Eve is the Hebrew Bible's temptress whose
1960, pp. 5–12.
actions condemn mankind to eternal damnation. Variations of
these characters can be found throughout Faulkner's novels. In
Light in August they are most strongly embodied through
Joanna Burden and Lena Grove.
The Eve figure is depicted in other literary forms, such as myth

and folklore, as a harbinger of death. Childbirth in pre-modern
societies is a violent act in which women often die. Also, a
woman's sexuality is commonly viewed in literature and other
art forms as terrifying in its power to overwhelm a man. Joanna
Burden's particular brand of Christianity and her illicit sexual
relationship with Joe Christmas (whose name, if not his
behavior, suggests Jesus Christ) mark her as the Eve
character. It is no accident that as her fertility wanes, her
religious convictions strengthen. Nor is it coincidental that in
Faulkner's novel those convictions are inextricably bound with
race. Her family's abolitionist stance along with her own sexual
voracity combine to give her a powerful hold over Joe
Christmas and other men in the community.
Lena, on the other hand, is pregnant, unwed, and mild-

mannered. She could not be more Mary-like. Faulkner
repeatedly describes her in pastoral terms, aligning her with
the sky, the light, the earth and all of its bounty. She is a life
giver, a nurturer who brings out the best in everyone she
meets. But she is not a passive character. She is on a journey
to right a wrong. She will not succumb to her destiny but is
determined to change it, even if change seems hopeless.
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ABOUT THE TITLE

l Symbols ..................................................................................................... 30 d In Context

e Suggested Reading .............................................................................. 32 Yoknapatawpha County

One effect of these inequities was the tightening of the

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involved in the reveal.

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August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) are set in

Later Career and Recognition

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women. She is ostracized by the folks in Jefferson, and her

Reverend Gail Hightower

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Joanna Burden Joe Brown

Other Major Character

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Full Character List Calvin Burden was Joanna Burden's

Nathaniel was Joanna Burden's father.

Joanna Burden is a 40-​year-​old single

The deputy assists the sheriff in

The furniture repairer picks up Byron

Bobbie Allen is a prostitute, as well as Percy Grimm is a white supremacist

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k Plot Summary Joe Christmas's History

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Joe in Hightower's house, where he shoots him repeatedly, and

The novel closes with Hightower thinking over the "phantoms"

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7. Percy Grimm finds, shoots, and castrates Joe Christmas.

1. Lena Grove walks from Alabama to Mississippi.

8. Hightower reflects on history, "phantoms," and family.

2. Joanna Burden is murdered and her house burned.

5. Joe Brown hops a train and abandons Lena Grove.

6. Joe Christmas escapes and hides in Hightower's house.

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Lena Grove walks from Alabama to Mississippi.

Shortly before that

When Lena Grove arrives

Byron Bunch reveals to Lena that Joe Brown is really

That same time

Joanna Burden is murdered and her house burned.

Joanna Burden's nephew offers a reward for the capture

About a week later

Joe Christmas is arrested in Mottstown.

Byron Bunch asks Reverend Gail Hightower to lie to

Lena Grove delivers her child.

A few days later

Joe Brown hops a train and abandons Lena Grove.

Percy Grimm organizes a patrol in downtown Jefferson.

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Joe Christmas escapes and hides in Reverend Gail

Percy finds Joe, shoots him, and castrates him before he

Hightower reflects on history, "phantoms," and family.

Two months later

Lena and Byron travel in search of the baby's father.

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statement of coming from Mississippi to Tennessee.

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This chapter introduces Reverend Gail Hightower, a disgraced

The Ku Klux Klan is the oldest hate group in America, and it

Joanna Burden is a 40-year-old single