Search For Ego-identity

Joe Christmas is the central character in Light in August, while his plight in searching for his real identity is one of the most important themes of the novel. In this thesis, the writer tries to analyze the formation of Joe's ego-identity and his struggle between the white world and the black world, both from Jacques Lacan's perspective. Lacan focuses on signifiers alone. The writer of this thesis has found that Faulkner dramatizes how language constructs identity in this novel-- Joe's identity is determined by what others say and what he himself says, his identity is constructed by a chain of signifiers. The writer thinks that Joe has similarities to the child in what Lacan calls the mirror stage and he is a man caught between, in Lacan's terms, the imaginary and the symbolic. When Joe stays in the orphanage, other kids call him "nigger", which is like the mother of the baby in the mirror stage telling the baby "It's you" when the baby looks into the mirror and sees his mirror stage. Lacan divides the human psychic development to three phases—the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. One's position in the symbolic is fixed by the Phallus, or the law-of-the-father. Throughout his life, Joe always refuses to submit to the authority of the law-of-the-father, therefore, he is caught between the imaginary and the symbolic...