Analysis Of The Causes Of Joe Christmas's Tragedy In Light In August

Light in August is technically one of the most brilliant and daring of William Faulkner's novels—so much so that the first readers were unsure that the novel possessed any real unity. This novel is Faulkner's longest one and is a masterpiece with complex plots which combines the stories of Joe Christmas, Hightower and Lena. It explores racism, touches on personality, sexism and social tragedy and criticizes Christianity and Puritanism. Since the 1990s, the European and American literary critics have focused on this novel and made great analyses.Faulkner's main concern, articulated in his Nobel Prize address is for "the old verities and truth of the heart, the old universal truth lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." (Tao Jie, 1998: p.61). Faulkner pursues these themes in his works which are heavily loaded with his desire to mold another world that transcends the corrupted one. Two worlds are constructed in Light in August: the natural, bright, simple, life-oriented world; and the taboo-ridden, dark, violent, death-oriented world. Through the contrast of two worlds, the writer successfully develops the plots and makes good characterizations. Focusing on its wide range of thematic concerns centered on racial identity, the conflicts between individual and the community, illicit sex, brutal violence and religious fanaticism, the author makes an attempt to analyze rays of light shining from the bright world in the exploration of the "plight world" and to perceive the social and moral psychology of human beings. He thinks the whole society is a dark house which fetters all the main characters. And the central theme of Light in August is that of man's inhumanity and the ruin it brings upon Joe Christmas. It is a theme seen on several levels, historically in terms of slavery and the Civil War, on the personal level as violence between man and woman which is generally symbolic of rejection of divine love.But how can we explain the fact that, through reading tragic novels we are invariably attracted and moved to tears by the tragic endings of these novels; and that we feel as if walking out of a theatre after watching a touching tragic play, like the effect our great masterpiece Oedipus had on the spectators?Focusing on the effect of social community, family members, racial fanaticism, and Joe's own personality, the author of the thesis will make an attempt to analyze the original causes of Joe Christmas's tragedy in Light in August.Chapter one centers on the development of Joe Christmas, a whiteman with supposedly black blood, in his infancy and adolescence, which leads to his conflicting ideas towards his identity and race. He is torn between the racial classification of being either a white or a black, but he finds neither of the identities fits him. Woven within Joe's development was Joanna, who dedicated herself to help the blacks but was not an equalitarian. Joanna's relation with Joe indicates that the ideology of white supremacy intertwined with religion is inherited from her forefathers and is engraved in her mind. What Joe Christmas truly pursues is not his identity as a black or a white but as a true human being. And we finally understand the childhood obsession formed the original cause of his isolation and violence: the growing-up in the orphanage, the effect of the former janitor of Memphis orphanage (his grandfather), Doc Hines and a sadistic Calvinist ( his foster father), Mr. McEachern, and the violence maker, Percy Grimm have on his development.Very early Joe Christmas came to feel that he was a being somehow apart from the other children, and he also became conscious of the fact that whites were somehow different from blacks. He is aware that he is a man who belongs to no community, who believes that every man's hand is raised against him. So his natural stance is to have his fist clenched and ready to strike back and to revolt!In chapter two, the author of the thesis makes an attempt to analyze Joe's personality, and his struggle for his identity and his self-definition. By comparing with the classic tragedy of Oedipus for striving against the prediction, we know that the sin of Joe's pride and arrogance and violence are also the causes of a failure to achieve self-knowledge. Because of his inner division, he cannot endure an offer of friendliness and affection. He is unable to formulate that rejection and must release through violence. He is a fatalist, because he has never been able to break out of the 'circle' of his predetermined fate. He has no choice but to struggle to create his personal identity.Discussed in the third chapter are some women who tried to break the strict social codes, and the community which obliterates Joe's personality. Joanna opposes slavery and even sacrifices her life to help the black people. She seeks happiness in the way that moral standards don't allow, so she is always pulled back to be confronted with the social code. But when she asks Joe to identify himself once and for all as a Negro, Joe strikes her, because both of them are victims of their absolutism. And the sexual aspects of Christmas's story has the symbolic importance of failure of love, not only the love between man and woman, the love between he and his fellows, but also the love between God and man.In Light in August, as in most of Faulknar's novels, the individual and the collective are inevitably entangled. No one, not even the outsider, is outside society, and not only are we all within society , but as soon as are we born and given a name, society is within us and it starts to shape our minds and lives. Christmas's destiny is a case in point.The fourth chapter turns to a careful scrutiny of Christianity, which is a southern heritage deeply impressed in the minds of Southerners for generations. Yet it is mingled with other abstract concepts, such as racism and sexism, and seldom exists in its pure form. Christmas's grandfather and foster father are both religious fanatics; so their behavior, influenced by racial discrimination, distorts the true Christian spirit. Racial bigotry has consumed not only all of Doc Hine's Christian charity but even his common sense; McEachern has plenty of fortitude in following his convictions, but he lacks kindliness, human sympathy, and mercy. It is Christmas's grandfather and foster father who should be mainly blamed for his abnormal personality. Their fanaticism drives them into madness to mold Christmas in terms of their misinterpreted Christianity.My thesis intends to show the original causes of the tragedy of Joe Christmas's extraordinary life from these four aspects. In Light in August, the text provides us much evidence that Joe is stuck between the identities of the black and the white. So Joe's real problem is actually an identical crisis. Racism, Puritanism, and Sexism are three dark powers to oppress the human heart and kindness. Based on the above elaboration of racism, women, and Christianity, this paper demonstrates that even though the tragedy of Joe and other characters is due to the doctrines of racism and Calvinism, which makes individuals its victims, there still exists some other origins. In my thesis, I go far beyond the problem of race, be it physical or psychological, and maintain that Joe's tragedy occurs from his own estranged and arrogant personality and the exclusion from the social community where he lives and his refusal to commit to certain identity.