After the mental gymnastics of [happily] getting through The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner reverts to a more recognizable and conventional narrative structure—for the most part—for Light in August. Chapter headings are numerical and ascend sequentially as the panorama of the narrative unfolds. The reader can identify the exposition introducing the various characters—whom, as a common denominator, are all non-Jefferson natives/outsiders—by the respective chapters. The point of entry is in media res—at the speed equivalent of a drawl—alongside Lena Grove in chapter 1; the third-person narrator then enlists Byron Bunch, a character within the story to be the eyes and ears in describing the arrival of Joe Christmas in chapter 2; chapter 3 is set aside to give the particulars of “exminister”, Gail Hightower and the cause(s) of “his disgrace” (48)…It isn’t until chapter 6 that the narrator takes a detour and deep dives into a flashback of Joe Christmas’s traumatic childhood as an orphan and upbringing as a foster child.
Though the attention has been redirected, Lena will obviously still have to figure into the story as the foundation is still being laid out and there are questions to be answered: will Lena and Lucas Burch a/k/a the scumbag, Joe Brown reunite? Will Lena be made an “honest woman” by either Burch/Brown? or Byron Bunch? With that said, I like that Faulkner has created a co-protagonist in Joe Christmas and branches off to give Joe some air time.
Something I find unsettling from the reading are two instances when Joe Christmas’s racial ambiguity is used against him with intent to deflect blame of the respective accuser’s personal transgressions and/or using it as a trump card of sorts. The idea of the accusation of Christmas being black came about as I was reading through Matthews’s chapter, “Come Up: From Red Necks to Riches”. Matthews uses the following example from Faulkner’s 1931 short story, “Dry September”: “Minnie triggers a tried-and-true imaginative mechanism when she cries rape. The modern South predicated racial segregation on the fear that emancipated black men posed a sexual threat to white women, and that new regulations had to replace the protections of slave codes” (Matthews, page 156, emphasis added). Similar to the stereotype of the black man as a “black beast rapist” from the example above, there are two moments when Joe is accused of being black—with all the weight of its associated stereotypes—, again, in an effort to take the scent off the accuser. The first occasion happens when Joe is only five years old, and his accuser is Miss Atkins, the young [and horny] dietician who works at the orphanage. The second occurrence is when Joe Brown rats out Christmas in an effort to regain his stake to the claim for the $1,000 reward in catching Joanna Burden’s killer.
I found it a little heartbreaking how there is a total failure of communication and lack of understanding between young Joe and his white adult caretakers at the orphanage starting with Miss Atkins. Her guilt in thinking she has been caught by young Joe in the act of having sex with a colleague (and that Joe will tell somebody) and inability to communicate with Joe leads her in a failed attempt to try to bribe him; which then leads her to retaliate and seek an ally in the janitor at the orphanage who—Miss Atkins thinks—is eyeing Christmas so vigilantly because the janitor can see the blackness in him which Joe is too young to comprehend how one’s race can even be something to disguise. Miss Atkins is finally able to find somewhat of an ally in the matron of the orphanage and reveals to her that Joe is allegedly black (pages 132 – 33). The accusation, the mere crying black is all that is needed for a course of action to be taken. In order to prevent a scandal of an all-white orphanage housing a black boy, the matron decides that Joe needs to be “placed” with an adopted family immediately.
Something in the narrator’s description of Joe Brown with his appearance and mannerisms gives off the idea that he is a sleazy guy…much like Ab Snopes in The Unvanquished. Apparently, it did not take our co-protagonist, Lena a long time to figure out that Joe Brown and Lucas Burch are very likely one and the same person. His involvement in implicating Joe Christmas is just as deleterious—if not more—than Miss Atkins. Seizing an opportunity of self-interest to claim the monetary reward, Brown cooperates without hesitation. What he fails to realize though is how his story to the marshal has holes that do not corroborate with that of another eye witness. In a last ditch effort to regain ground, Brown blurts out: “That’s right,”…“Go on. Accuse me. Accuse the white man that’s trying to help you with what he knows. Accuse the white man and let the n— go free. Accuse the white and let the n— run” (97). There is a moment of utter disbelief felt by all in the room before the marshal tells Brown of the gravity of his accusation: “You better be careful what you are saying, if it is a white man you are talking about,”…”I don’t care if he is a murderer or not” (98). Much like Minnie’s unfounded rape cry in “Dry September”, the marshal has a similar “imaginative mechanism” hardwired into equating male blackness with that of a “black beast rapist”. According to the marshal, it is worse for Joe Christmas to be a black man than to be a murderer who is white.
