William Faulkner’s Religious Attitude In Light In August

Faulkner, who wins the Nobel Prize Laureate, is one of the most celebrated writersin the20th Century. Because he lives in the Southern Bible Belt, Faulkner usesabundant allusions and references relating to the Bible in his works. In his mostwell-known novel Sound and Fury and Light in August, he quotes a set of scripturalimages and allusions. By analyzing biblical images, biblical narrative structure andChristian characters, this thesis gradually reveals Faulkner’s religious attitude. Faulknermentions that his quotation from the Bible aims to depict people. He borrows theBiblical structure and images to depict the cruel reality. He gives us a hard comparisonto encourage us to move ahead in our path.This thesis contains three parts, The first chapter introduces the present research onthis novel and the argument.The first part of Chapter two makes a comparison between the biblical image waterand fire and two images in Light in August. Through the analysis of the images, chapterone reveals the function of the images and Faulkner’s approve of religion. The secondpart of Chapter two analyses the narrative structure. Compared with the biblicalnarrative structure, the story of Lena is a typical comedy and a U narrative structure.The story of Christmas is a typical tragedy. He moves out from the religioussurroundings, but ultimately goes back to the township, the religious surroundings.According to the comparison between the narrative structures, we can understandFaulkner’s anti-Puritan thought. Puritanism kills and distorts humanity. People can havea harmonious humanity by getting far away from Puritanism. The third part of ChapterTwo is to deal with Christian characters. The first one is Christmas. The suffering ofJesus is on Friday. Christmas is killed on a Friday, too. Faulkner intentionally comparesJoe Christmas with Jesus Christ. Christmas’s tragedy is not made by himself, but thereligion and the reality. He is the scapegoat of human being. The second Christiancharacter is Hines who is Christmas’ grandfather. He delivers a deep impact on Christmas’s character shaping. Before the birth of Christmas, Hines indirectly kills hisparents and transports him to the orphan asylum. In the orphan asylum, he guardsChristmas and tells him that he is a nigger. Even when Christmas is caught inMottztown, Hines shouts to kill him. Hines shapes his cold and racist character. Thethird one is McEachern, Christmas’ adoptive father. He is a crazy South Puritan. Hecompels Christmas to be a Puritan but finally Christmas runs away. The last one isCalvin Burden, who is the grandfather of Miss Burden. He is a crazy Calvinist. Healways drinks whiskey and wakes up his kids to beat God in them. From the depictionon these extreme sectaries, Faulkner expresses his opposition to Calvinism andPuritanism.Chapter three is the conclusion. This chapter concludes the main idea and theargument of this thesis paper and points out the citation of biblical imagery, biblicalnarrative structure and Christian characters are not done for satire, but for people’ssalvation from distorted Puritanism and Calvinism. People should absorb the goodaspects from religion and abandon the distorted aspects.