The Structure Of Light In August: Plurality And Cohesion

Light in August is one of the most famous novels of William Faulkner. It catches the attention of critics immediately upon its publication. Most of them pay high tribute to the novel and unanimously agree that Light in August is one of the most beautifully written and strikingly conceived of Faulkner's novels, but many of them think that it is structurally defective due to the episodic narrative fragments. Subsequent critics make efforts to find the thematic unity of the novel based upon racism, Protestantism or the Southern past. However, none of these is adequate to govern the whole novel.This thesis approaches Light in August from a new perspective to throw some light on the structure of the novel so as to reveal its plurality and cohesion. The episodic narrative fragments of the novel can be recuperated into four strands with Joe Christmas, Joanna Burden, Gale Hightower and Lena Grove at the center respectively. Joe Christmas, whose uncertain racial identity affects every aspect of his life, makes insistent and persistent search for his identity all his life. Joanna Burden, a masculine spinster, is heavily burdened with and finally dies of her family heritage. Gale Hightower, haunted by his grandfather's past, loses touch with reality, but achieves a spiritual rebirth by traveling the moral distance from selfish immunity to redemption with the conviction that immunity cannot be bought. Lena Grove, a pregnant young woman searching for her fled lover, represents the serenity and fertility of life rooted in a benevolent nature. She is the symbol of the Earth Mother.The four strands of the novel develop around four different consciousnesses of equal value, thus creating the novel's plurality. Atthe same time, the contrast between Lena and Joe, Joanna, Hightower is actually the contrast between their mergence into and isolation from the community, which are of different causes and show the four major characters' different attitudes towards life. The strand of Lena confirms an ideal of integrity and wholeness in the light of which the other alienated characters are judged. On the basis of the similarities and dissimilarities, one strand echoes the other. Therefore, through foiling and juxtaposition, the four separate strands paradoxically derive a kind of intrinsic cohesion at the level of proposition-the individual's relationship to the community. The novel's cohesion is also derived from the interconnecting patterns such as symbolism, image, repetition, and substitution. By these techniques, different stories of different characters are compacted.Therefore, despite the apparent looseness, the structure of Light in August obtains intrinsic cohesion and its plurality reflects the confusion and contradiction of the American South in Faulkner's works. It is exactly the plurality and cohesion of the structure that contributes greatly to the vitality and artistic brilliance of Light in August.