u

T 4 CHARACTERIZATION AND
CRITICAL APPROACHES

Objectives
Introduction
Critical Analysis of The Sound And The Fury
Main Characters
4.3.1 Joe Christmas
4.3.2 Jaonne Burden
4.3.3 Gail Hightower
4.3.4 Lena Grove
4.3.5 Byron Bunch
Some Critical Approaches
4.4.1 Light in August in the light of Rakhtin's Views
4.4.2 Religious Approach
4.4.3 Psycho-Analytical and Feminist Approach
Let Us Sum Up
Questions
Suggested Reading
\

4.01 OBJECTIVES

Unit we will discuss the main characters. Also, we will provide you with an
is of some of the critical approaches to Light In August.

4.4 INTRODUCTION

is a fictional world peopled by characters and a novel's quality like a play's

upon characterization. In this unit I propose to analyse the main characters in
1viz. Joe Christmas, Joanne Burden, Gail Hightower, Lena Grove and Byron
also propose to discuss some critical approaches to the novel like the
,the Biblical, the psycho-analytical and the feminist approaches.

literature offers both the frustration of a journey without maps. The

ortive paraphernalia of definitive biographies and major critical books is often
ng, and in its absence the studknt can enjoy the freedom of discovering and
for himself. But although the literary history of the present age cannot yet be
adequately, the American novelists represented in this section can still be
in a tentative historical framework.

two earliest writers considered here William Faulkner and John Steinbeck, are
the Lost Generation but significantly different in spirit. Faulkner is
ed from men like Hemingway and Scott Fitzergerald by the idiosyncratic
imes wayward) nature of his own genius with his deep involvement in
Faulkner ploughed a brave and fither lovely furrow; his work is
main achievements of twentieth century fiction.
eneration in a simpler way. Deeply influemed by
he abandoned wi&l romanticism for a grittty and naturalism with
became, in W, the heir to that earlier tradition
Light In August Critics have often succumbed to the temptation of presenting Faulkner and Steinbeck
as opposing models between whom subsequent writers have had to choose. The
American novelist, so this argument goes, may write either in the romance tradition
epitomized by Faulkner or the realist tradition represented by Steinbeck There is
certainly evidence to support this view. q e r e has been, for example, a whole school
of Southern Writers usingFaulkner7s mode of Gothic romance: Paul Bowles, Truman
Capote, William Styron and Flannery 6' Connor. And one can certainly see the
influence of The Grapes of wrath on Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. Yet i
this interpretation simplifies contemporary Amencan fiction to the point of distortion.
I
4.2 CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SOUND AND THE 1
FURY

The Soltnd and the Fury was Faulkner's own favourite amongst his novels. -1 have
the most tenderness for that book,' he told an audience of students at the University
1
of Nagano. Earlier, in a prefacc to the Modern Literary edition of Sanchtrarjl (1932),
he spoke of 'having written my guts into 'The Sound and the Fury'. Modem
Criticism has concurred with this preference. Today The Sound and the Fury is
widely acknowledged to be Faulkner's finest achievement - and hence one of the
finest achievements of modern American Literature.

Yet at the time of the Novel's publication in 1929 its critical reception was
discouraging; as he confessed in the Sanctuary preface, Faulkner 'believed then that I
would never be published again. I had stopped thinking of myself in publishing
terms.' The most frequent voiced objection was the baffling obscurity of Faulkner's
nar&tivc technique. Indeed, when the novel was published as part of Macolm
Cowley's The Portable Falclkner in 1946, the editor aild publisher persuaded
Faulkner to add an Appendix elucidating much of the plot. The author had, after all,
a simple enough story to tell. He wanted to recount the traumatic and unhappy lines
of the four Compson Children - Caddy, Quentin, Jason and Benjy - and suggest the
ways in which their separate tragedies echoed the general decline of the old Southern
aristocratic families.

Faulkner took his title for the novel from Macbeth's nihilistic speech about life's
fhtility; and the fate of the Compson family would seem to fhlfill this pessimistic note
yet the decision to add a fourth section to the novel, concentrating on the black
servant Dilbey, introduces a lot of qualified opticism. Alone amongst the characters
in the novel Dilbey retains an ability, not to enjoy life or even to ask much from it,
but to survive and help others to survive. As she goes about her depressing round of
chores - gathering firewood, cooking breakfast, comforting the querulous Mrs.
Compson and the t e a f i l Benjy - Dilsey radiates an atmosphere of warmth and
stability. In the final sentence of his 1946 Appendix Faulkner paid a crytpic but
moving tribute to Dilsey and her fellow blacks: 'they endured'. In his Nobel Prize
speech Faulkner returned, though in more confided and asscertive vein, to this notion
of endurance. He believed, he said, 'that man will not merely endure. He will
prevail.. .because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and
endurance. '

4.3 THE MAIN CHARACTERS

The southern myth is a story or a cluster of stories that expresses the deepest
attitudes and reflects the most fundamental experiences of a people. Its
subject is the fate of a ruined homeland. The homeland-so the story goes-
had proudly insisted that it alone should determine its destiny. Provoked into
 a war impossible to win, it had nevertheless fought to its last strength, and it Characterisation
had fought this war with a reckless gallantry and a superb heroism that, as and Critical
Faulkner might say, made of its defeat not a shame but almost a vindication. Approaches
Yet the homeland fell, and from this fall ,came misery and squalor; ravaging
by the conquerors, loss of faith among the descendants of the defeated, and
the rise of a new breed of faceless men . . .
[Irving Howe, William Faulkner: A Critical Study (Chicago: Elephant
Paperbacks, 1952), pp .27-281

er's Yoknapatawpha novels are representations of this myth. Jefferson is the

this myth in Light in August, and the main characters in the novel are
of this myth whether they are native to the soil or immigrants there. As
1 Vickery points out,
Collectively Jefferson is Southern, White, and Elect, qualities which have
meaning within a context which recognized something or someone as
Northern, or Black or Damned. This antithesis is periodiMly affirmed
through the sacrifice of a scapegoat who represents, in fact or popular
conviction, those qualities which must be rejected if Jefferson is to maintain
its self-defined character.

[The Novels of William Faulkner: A Critical Interpretation (Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press, 1964), pp.67-681.

F
Joe hristmas, Gail Hightower and Joanne Burden serve as such scapegoats while
Len Grove and Byron Bunch belong to a land outside the limits of this myth.

4.3b Joe Christmas

stmas is a bundle of contradictions and thus poses a threat to all established
l
ed categories. He d ~ e not
s belong to any category. He feels a Black before
a White before Blacks. He is, in Shakespeare's famous phrase, an
I odated man'(King Lear,III). He is rootless and becomes the antagonist.
t
s account throws light on the pathetic nature of Christmas's birth and life.
is unable to forgive his daughter Millie's pregnancy, calls her lover a
,kills him, and looks for a scapegoat to bear the guilt and punishment. Later
ation finds support in the dietician's outburst when she and her lover are
the midst of their love-making. Both Hines and the dietician, motivated
b reasons, contribute to Christmas's awareness as a Negro and force the
on that assumption.
1
I
epts Mr. McEachern's Calvinistic discipline as an escape from responsibilities
If-judgment. But when he finds a human relationship with Bobbie, the waitress,
on love, he rebels against McEachern's religious discipline But this
ship is short-lived for Bobbie turns against him after he beats her for not
rrified by his confession that there is Negro blood in him. She watches as her
eat him up. This further intensifies his awareness of his predicament. He
s that he provokes racial violence from Negro and White alike.

sions become more acute during his relationship with Joanne Burden. Her
political and religious obsessions contribute to the heightening of the tensions
them. Their love-makng reflects this tension and the inbuilt contradiction.
stasy of her love she mutters Negro! Negro! Negro! Instead of Joe! Joe! Joe!
her endearing term. This reflects her obsession and agonizing tension.
I

I
sists that he accept the role of a Negro and that of a repentant sinner. This is a
he has been avoiding all along and when it is his razor against her old civil
Light In August war pistol we are not surprised. The knife he uses to kill her is used towards the end
to castrate him.

During his flight Christmas pauses at a Negro church. He assaults the elderly parson,
stands in the pulpit, and declaims against God. He strikes an attitude characteristic of
the anti-Christ. This completes the parallel course of Christmas's passion, running
through the episodes involving Hines, the dietician, McEachern, Bobbie, and Miss j

Burden, and leads to his crucifixion. As he is shot and castrated by Grimm, he t1

transcends the categories of Black and White, and experiences for a moment the
awareness that he belongs to the human race. He ascends neither as the son of a I
Negro nor as the son of a White man but as the son of Man: i
He just lay there, with his eye open and empty of everything save
consciousness, and with something, a shadow, about his mouth. For a long
moment he looked up at them with peacefil and unfathomable and
unbearable eyes. Then his face, body, all, seemed to collapse, to fall in upon
itself, and from out the slashed garments about his hips and loins the pent
black blood seemed to rush like a released breath. It seemed to rush out of
his pale body like the rush of sparks from a rising rocket; upon that black
blast the man seemed to rise soaring into their memories forever and ever.
(Light in August, p. 407)

The other two main characters barring Lena Grove, who serves as a foil to these three
and a frame for the novel, are Joanne Burden and Gail Hightower. Joe Christmas,
Miss Burden and Hightower represent the three categories in terms of which the
South establishes its identity - the racial, the geographical and the religious. As Olga
Vickery observes, "The Negro, the Yankee, the Apostate - these are the key figures
in a society which defines itself by exclusion" (The Novels of William Faulkner.
P 75)

4.3.2 Joanne Burden

Joanne Burden's father, Nathaniel Burden, injects a moral attitude into her
perception of the physical black and white. She learnt to see them "not as people. but
as a thing, a shadow in which I lived, we lived, all white people, all other people I
thought of all the children coming forever and ever into the world, white. with the
black shadow already falling upon them before they drem breath. And I seemed to see
the black shadow in the shape of a cross (Light in August, p.22 1)

Miss Burden thinks of herself as a martyr to the 'black cross'. She is a Northern
woman carrying the burden of the cross. The conflict between the female in her and
her intellectual heritage makes her a dual personality. Her identification of sex with
sin and sexual superstitions associated with a Negro make her feel that "she is not
having intercourse with a man but with an image of her own creation, with the idea of
Negro for which she has given up her life. Accordingly. she emerges from the affair
with her instincts once more crystallized and intensified" (Olga Vicker!. p. 76)

Christmas becomes an obsession with Miss Burden. She cannot leave him [Link] is
Miss Burden's burden. He represents her responsibility, her sin and her salvation. She
insists that he admit his black blood and act in accordance with her concepts of race
and religion. Joe's refisal to do so draws a violent reaction from her. It is an
interesting irony that what she fails to do the mob does later forcing him to become a
Negro by lynching him and castrating him. He is at last nailed on the black cross.

4.3.3 Gail Hightower

If Christmas and Joanne are obsessed with race and religion, Gail Hightower is
obsessed with the exploits of the Southern heroes, represented by his grand father, in
the civil war. He finds it impossible to live down these legends, which come to
 e his mind completely. This eventually destroys him for he becomes Characterisation
nt to the quality of his actual expression. and Critical
Approaches
And they told Byron how the young minister was still excited even after six
months, still talking about the civil war and his grand father, a cavalryman,
who was killed, and about General Grant's stores burning in Jefferson until it
did not make sense at all. They told Byron how he seemed to talk that way in
the pulpit too, wild too in the pulpit, using the religion as though it were a
dream. (Light in August, P.52-53)
istmas, Hightower is isolated from his community. He is the religious face
stmas is the racial face of this isolation. His every action becomes a
the will of the community, and he invites humiliation and violence
self. Forced to resign from the church, beaten by the Ku Klux Klan and by
s and brushed aside and pushed away by Percy Grimm he is the ever
lienated figure living in his lonely house visited by only one man,
his only link with the world. It is only at the instance of Byron that he
the birth of Lena's child and makes a feeble and infructuous attempt to save
stures of momentary participation in life; otherwise he remains only a
. In both the cases his participation in life has a vital significance in
g life, assisting at a birth and staving off death.
4.3.41 Lena Grove
s story enfolds the entire action of the novel wth the warmth of life
moral and social considerations and categories. Her calm provides a foil
ions and agonies of Christmas, Joanne and Hightower. Lena lends a
to the story. The story begins wth her as an unmarried pregnant
n Mary figure-and ends with her as a happy mother holding her
figure. She provokes different reactions from different people.
ntemptuous but not unkind. Mrs. Armstid regards her as a fallen
the store treat her with scorn and pity. Brown (Lucas Burch),
her child, considers her as a responsibility to be shunned. Byron,
upon her as an innocent girl seduced by a scoundrel.
curtain rises on the novel, we see Lena sitting beside the road, watching the
thinking ' I have come from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from
. A fur piece'. (Light in August, p.3)

d
Loo i t this portrait of her in Faulkner7swords:
From beneath a sunbonnet of faded blue, weathered now by other
than formal soap and water, she looks up at him quietly and
pleasantly: young, pleasant faced, candid, friendly, and alert. She
does not move yet. Beneath the faded garment of that same
weathered blue her body is shapeless and immobile. The fan and
bundle lie on her lap. She wears no stockings. Her bare feet rest side
by side in the shallow ditch. The pair of dusty, heavy, man looking
shoes beside them are not more inert. (Light in August, p. 10)
chosen to sketch her personality are 'young7, 'pleasant fhced', 'candid',
'alert'. Her immobility and her feet resting and inert indicate how calm
is. Lena commits an offence against conventional morality. Still
r leniently and sympathetically. Some people express their
er pregnancy without marriage but they help her in her need. Even
rigid about the law and permits her the use of Miss Burden's
. The truck driver gives up his bed for her. This is because of Lena's calm,
d friendly attitude in which there is no place for any kihd of antagonism or
Joe Christmas, Joanne Burden and Gail Hightower build barricades
ves and society and alienate themselves, Lena Grove demolishes all
humility and friendliness. She accepts the f p d and shelter offered
Light In August by others as sustaining thing? and is indifferent to the spirit or prejudtces behind the
offer. This is in sharp contrast to Christmas's rejection of the food offered thus
because of his obsessive ideas and his hypersensitivenessto the thoughts and
attitudes of the giver.

4.3.5 Byron Bunch

Byron Bunch is an uncommitted person leading an isolated life. He takes no interest

in affairs which do not concern him. But his love for Lena brings about a
transformation in his character and world view. It is love and the desire to care for
Lena that bring about this change. This makes him flow out and help others. He goes
to great lengths to persuade the Sheriff to arrange a meeting between Lena and Lucas
Burch, He persuades Hightower to try to save Christmas. He is the only source of
comfort to the unfortunate and lonely Hightower. I

Byron's love and loyalty towards Lena put us in mind of a solid character like
Thomas Hardy's Gabriel Oak. As we develop sympathy for Lena, it is comforting to
know that she is not left alone and that Byron's love is not spumed if not accepted
without any reservations.

And he (Byron) came around the back of it and he stood there and her not
even surprised "1 done come too fir now, " he says " I be dog if I'm going to
quit now." And her looking at him like she had known all the time what he
was going to do before he even know himself that he was goig to, and that
whatever he done, he wasn't going to mean it.
"Aint nobody never said for you to quit." She says (Light in August, 443)

4.4 SOME CRITICAL APPROACHES

Critics have taken pains to demostrate how Faulkner's technique serves his theme in
the novel. The separate plots about Joe, Lena, and Hightower, for example, testify
powerfblly to man's isolation. And even when people do meet, or, as with Joe and
Joanna, collide, they never do really communicate with one another. Each is sealed
off in his own traumatic world of self. The same fate befalls even the Minor
characters: Doe Hines, McEachern, and Percy Grimn. By keeping characters like Joe
and Lena from ever meeting, Faulkner not only underscores the theme of alienation
and frustration but counterpoints Joe's agony against Lena's serenity.

Similarly, the varied points of view used to narrate the story suggest how impossible
it is for any single mind to comprehend the range of experience. Shifting from
Lena's intuitive mind to Joe's inwardness and then to Hightower's agonized
detachment, the reader begins to appreciate the kind of omniscience required to
understand the power and weakness of man.

d
Many critics have seen in the story of Joe Christmas ironic parallel to the New
Testament account of Jesus Christ. Among the more obvious and analogies are these:
Joe's wandering in his early manhood, and his inevitable progress towards
crucifixion during the last seven days of his life. But Joe is no savior. HISdeath
saves no soul, frees no sprit. Indeed, as Edrnond Volpe points out, Joe alone finds
-release, not the society whose racist concept crucifies hlm: ; 'the fear and guilt of his
society.. . are reinforced.. . and the concept will be imposed during childhood. for the
heirs of the executioners and make these victims, in their turn, executioners." Joe
cannot save the south from its puritanical mentality. He can serve only as a
scapegoat, suffering torment for a tormented people, white and black alike.

Joe dies trying to discover some justification for living. Hightower, on the other hand,
surrenders his quest. "I am not in life any more," he says, rejecting at last the forces
 and death symbolized by Lena and Joe. 0Ay Byron Bunch and Lena Grove Characterisation
e to face the future. Yet F a u h e r holds forth no shining promise for them: and Critical
s too primitive, Byron more dogged than delighted about his commitment to Approaches
nce. Lena's delivery of her child is only an affirmation of a natural process.
is "Light in August", as a cow might be; she has delivered her bodily burden.
no other "light" shines through to beckon her or the others. The "shadow" of Joe
s still falls darkly across the land when the novel ends.

1
4. .1 Bakhtin's Views

h e r seems to be interested in the dualism of order and disorder, art and reality,
creations of Yoknapatawpha was a way of imposing an order on contemporary
ory which was a panorama of futility and anarchy. By creating a region, which
s a parallel reality ruled by art, Faulkner creates a world which he could deal with

asthes says, it is a word-oriented world that confronts the myth of reality by

hifyng it in turn to produce an artificial myth. This reconstituted myth may be
ribed as a counter myth that subverts reality by recreating it (Barthes, p. 147).

t in August may be viewed as a significant attempt on Faulkner's part at

oring the polyvalent significance of self, history and art in the modem world.
novel may be called, in Bakhtin's famous phrase, a 'polyphonic novel', which
s reality as multiple in nature. The multiple discourses in the novel construct
rent versions of reality from different points of view. Here we find Faulkner
bverting the mimetic tradition using multiple perspectives. We do not find a
ctional rendering of objective reality here, for Faulkner's discourse tries to establish
ialogical contact between the subjective and the objective. This militates against
notion of the unity of a work of art.

Probletns of Dostoevsky 's Poetics, Bakhtin decries the attempt to find in

stoevsky's novels a specific monological authorial idea (Bakhtin, 1984,p.229) He
resses himself in favour of 'the living mix of varied and opposing voices7(The
logic Imagination, 198 l,p.49). Thus the two main character- zones of the novel,
stmas's and Lena's remain separate and antithetical, each qualifying the other.
is underlines the truth that life is too large and complex for definitions.

e multiple voices and perspectives break down the definitiveness of authorial

iscience and assert the fluidity of experiential reality. Faulkner employs the
lectic of motion and stasis. As he says, "the aim of every artist is to arrest motion
ich is life and hold it fixed so that 100 years later, when a stranger looks at it, it
s again since it is life"(Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner,
,p.253). This is also adopted in the cinematographictechnique of arresting
otion and restoring it. Manisha Mukhopadhay points out: 1

The dialectic of dynamism and inertia is the governing artistic principle of

the novel, embodied by the central image of the novel, that of the road with
which the novel begins and ends; the road that Christplas travels in circles
and the road that stretches out before Lena in [Link] linearity; the
road through which Percy Grimm pursues Christmas (William Faulkner: A
Centennial Tribute, 1999, p. 13 1).

-1
Now look at what Bakhtin says on the metaphor of the road:
On the road the spatial and temporal series defining human fates and llves
combine with one another in distinctive ways even as they become more
complex and more concrete by the collapse of social distances. The
chronotope of the road is both a point of new departures and a place for
 events to find their denouement. Time ,as it were, hses together with space
Light In August and flows in it (The Dialogrc Imagination, 1981, p. 131).

4.4.2 Religious Approach

We find Faulkner using a Biblical frame-work in The Sound and the Airy. The first
four sections of the novel, narrated by four people fiom their different points of view.
are patterned on the four Gospels. In Light in August also, Faulkner uses a
Christological frame-work playing on the words, Christmas, rise, Light, and The
Player.
In the New Testament story, Jesus was crucified and killed, but the 'The Light of the
World', promising eternal life, was born. In Light in August, Christmas was killed on
the black cross, and the Light was born in the form of Lena's child. Jesus knew that
he would be killed and walked to his death. Christmas also knew that he would be
killed and moved towards his doom. In both the cases, it was 'The Player'. the
supreme power that moved them. Faulkner, in the course of the man-hunt after
Christmas, uses the word, 'The Player' for the inexorable and irresistible force that
propels everybody and everything including Christmas and his executioner, Percy
Grimm. Gail Hightower, the holy man, assists in the tiirth of the 'Light in
AugustY(Lena'schild) even as the wise men of the East were present when 'The
Light of the World' was born, and John ,the Baptist, was present at Jesus's Baptism.
The thought that he is the author and instrument of his wife's death leads Hightower
to this self-knowledge: "If I am the instrument of her despair and death, then I am in
turn instrument of someone outside myself' (Light in August. p.465).
The child, who represents the continuity of life and hence is called the 'Light in
August' is set off against the dark background of Joe Christmas's violent death and
the flight of Lucas Burch, the Judas figure who betrays his friend, Christmas, for the
reward announced. The allusion to the ascension of Jesus in the use of the word 'rise'
while describing Christmas's death is also significant. The child, who appears briefly
in the novel, is given a great deal of symbolic importance in that it provides an
emotional comfort to the alienated characters in the novel. As Manisha Mukhopadhay
says, " Mrs. Hines perceives him as an incarnation of Joe; he hrther parallels Joe in
his status as a potential Christ-figure - with Byron as surrogate father, his fanlily is
an image of the holy family of Christ. Hightower too views him as his link with
posterity" (William Faulkner: A Centennial Tribute, p. 129).

4.4.3 Psycho-Analytical and Feminist Approach

French feminism has been deeply affected by psycho-analysis, especiaily by Lacan's
reworking of Freud's theories. French feminists, by following Lacan's theories. have
overcome the hostility towards Freud shared by most feminists. Before Lacan.
Freud's theories, especially in the United States had been reduced to a crude
biological level. "According to Freud, 'Penis-envy' is universal in wcmen and is
responsible for their 'castration complex", which results in their regard~ngthemselves
as hommes manques rather than a positive sex in their own right."
(Rarnan Selden, A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 1990 P. 146)
Ernest Jones's term 'phallocentric' for this theory is widely adopted by Feminists
when discussing male domination in general. They have reacted bitterly to a vieu of
woman as passive and penis-envying rather than as a woman in her own right as a
man is a man in his own right.
Lena is an example of the passive woman badly exploited by Lucas Burch, the man ,

whom she trusts implicitly. Even after he deserts her she goes in search of him
traveling great distances. In spite of his betrayal, she never even once talks ill of him
She is the innocent, dedicated, passive woman who never loses her trust in her man
however bad he may be. This is a case of phallo centrism where the man takes the
woman for granted and abuses her innocence and goodness.
 le of the penis-envying woman. She is the kind of woman Characterisation
ike to be a man--dominating and dynamic. She is haughty and superior and Critical
-woman's-burdencomplex, which Christmas finds insufferable. She is Approaches
dominating, in complete contrast to Lena. She has plans for
but Christmas does not fit in with those plans. In the end the two
confront each other-- Joanne with an old revolver and Christmas
kills her and this act sets off a chain of events culminating in
s's search for identity.
moment Freud and Lacan and look at Lena and Joanne as two
n. Both are strong in different ways. Lena's unruffled calm gives
ngth, khich helps her not only to endure but to prevail in the end
s as a Madonna figure holding in her arms the 'light of life' in a
city, love, and faith, positive virtues in any age, give her

other hand, Joanne's loneliness and passionate nature get her involved with a
abnormal, violent [Link] desire to dominate and impose her will
a bitter hostility and her untimely and tragic death.
seems to uphold simplicity, love, faith, and gentleness rather than a
and a desire to dominate as qualities that give strength to a woman.
McEachern, like Lena, offer a striking contrast to Joanne, and

4.5 1 LET US SUM UP

attempted to discuss Faulkner and Light in August from different points of

re may be things in a novel which we do not like and do not want to happen
's but, in the hands of a master craftsman like Faulkner, they give us a sense
its deeper meanings. Fauher's style and narrative strategies, sometimes,
1 problems to the reader, but once he overcomes these initial resistences
the text of the novel, he will be richly rewarded. Light in August is no
is a challenging novel. Take up the challenge and enjoy the text.

4.6 1( QUESTIONS

Write a note on the character of Joe Christmas.

"Lena Grove's story enfolds the entire action of the novel, Light in August".
Discuss.
Do you find any religious meaning in Light in August? Explain.
What do you find interesting in the role of Gail Hightower.
Write a long notes on Bakhtin's Views on Light In August.

4.7 (1 SUGGESTED READING

Bakhtin, M.M. Dialogic Irnag~mtion:Four Essays by [Link].

Ed.Michae1 Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin:
Unversity of Texas Press, 1981.
Bakhtin, M.M. Problems of Dostoevsky S poetics. Ed. And Trans. Caryl
Emerson. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Basset John., Ed., William Faulkner: The Critical Heritage. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
Faulkner, William. Light in August. New York: The Modern Library,
1950(First published, 1932).
Light In August Faulkner, William. Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner.
1926-62. [Link] [Link] and Michael Millgate. New York:
Random House, 1968
Howe, Irving. William Faulkner: A critical study. Chicago Press in 1952).
Gwynn, Frederick L. and Joseph [Link]., Faulkner in the University:
Class Conferences at the University of Virginia, 1957-1958. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 1959.
Jenkins, Lee Clinton, Faulkner and Black- White Relations: A Psycho-
Analytical Approach. New York:Columbia University Press, 1981.
Kartiganer, Donald M. The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form In
Faulkner 's Novels. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press .
Mandal, Somdatta. Ed. William Faulkner: A Centennial [Link] Delhi:
Prestige Books, 1999
Millgate, Michael. New Essays on Light in August. Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
Raman Selden, A Reader's Guide to ContemporaryLiterary
Theory:.University of Kentucky Press.
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