Joe Christmas: A Symbol Of Faulkner’s Contradictory Idea Of Race

Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner is celebrated as one of the greatestAmerican novelists, in whose works the issue of race is the frequent subject. Being aSoutherner and Southern writer, Faulkner’s view on the problem of race is worthcareful study. This thesis is expected to broaden the understanding not only of theFaulkner’s figure characterization which serves well the theme of race but also of theauthor’s conflicting idea of race as well as the reasons for it.This thesis falls into three chapters. The first chapter is supposed to analyze theprotagonist Joe Christmas from three aspects: his relationship with white people, hisattitude towards black people and his attitude towards himself. Firstly, Joe’srelationship with white people will be discussed here. On one hand, he suffers a lotfrom the racism of white people. By depicting this, Faulkner shows his sympathytowards the victims of racism and condemns the racism strongly. On the other hand,the imperfection of Joe’s personality can be easily noticed for the author puts him incomparison with a white woman who is to some extent perfect in the author’sopinion. It seems that the author wants us to know the suffering of black people isnot only caused by white people but also by themselves’ own flaws. Secondly, Joe’sattitude towards black people will be analyzed. Although Joe’s own identity is ariddle, he shows detestation of black people, which means that people are so deeplyinfluenced by the racism that even people who have black background themselvesdetest their own blood. Thus, the author’s negative attitude towards racism can befound here. However, in the end of the novel, Joe let himself die as a black murdererwhich shows his compromise with his black background. From this, we could findout the author’s pessimism about black people’s struggle. Thirdly, Joe’s attitudetowards himself, specifically speaking, his identity, will be discussed. Joe spends allhis life searching for his identity. Although he fails in the end, he wins the author’s praise which shows the author’s recognition of the struggle of black people. However,in giving Joe a tragic end, the author demonstrates pessimism. Thus the author’sconflicting idea of race can be easily told here. Based on the analysis in chapter one,chapter two will concentrate on William Faulkner’s conflicting idea of race. On onehand, he condemns the racism strongly; on the other hand, he shows his gradualismin his idea of race. Such attitude can be told from his attitude towards the racialproblem in real life as well as from that reflected from his works. The last chapterwill deal with the reasons of William Faulkner’s idea of race. His conflicting attituderesults from his interactions with the black people and his complex feelings towardsthe American South.