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Summary: A MUST READ FOR EVERYONE
Review: A perfect starting point for all literature buffs and nonbuffs alike. Faulkner takes you on a fast paced, can't put the book down tour of the old south, where being white ranked special privileges and being black meant a constant struggle to stay alive. Faulkner bares no bones in depicting the racial tensions in that time period. The characters, escpeciall Joe Christian are instantly recognizable and you quickly start to be enthralled by what will happen next. If you like this book I highly reccommend not only other Faulkner books already mentioned above, but also one by Flannery O'Conner titled Everything that Rises Must Converge. Her writings also show a painful depiction of racial tensions in the south. In O'Conner's stories pay special attention to any mention of light, this will always symbolize a revolution relevent to the story. Read...it does a soul good!!!!
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Summary: A BOOK BEFORE IT'S TIME!
Review: A small southern town deals with situations that are normal today.Children out of wed-lock, bi-racial children,and murder are a few issues that is forced upon these sheltered souls. I found the characters complex and enduring. The plots move back and fourth but, I was able to follow themeasily. I really liked this book. I wanted to read Faulkner but, was'nt sure where to start. I believe Light in August will make you think about the lives of these unseeming people for quite sometime. I have Faulkner back on my list ofauthors to read again.
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Summary: A well-told tale of injustice and racism ...
Review: A well-told tale of injustice and racism in the deep south 1930s. I thought Faulkner was over my head until I found this book. This is a good place to start reading Faulkner.It starts out a little slow and dry, but picks up soon enough. The interesting thing about this book is that the protagonist is neither innocent nor likeable. Yet, you can't help thinking that he is the product of a society that wanted him dead (literally) from the moment he was born. Some readers may even empathize with him. Overall, this was a good read.
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Summary: Splendid
Review: Absolutely fabulous, the best starting point for anyone wanting to get to know the genius of Faulkner
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Summary: Faulkner's Most Likeable Masterpiece
Review: After reading Faulkner's four major masterpieces -- The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying; and Light in August -- I've come to the conclusion that Light in August is far and away the easiest to read, has the most dramatic plot, the most intriguing primary characters in Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower and Joanna Burden, and even some of his most intriguing minor characters in Uncle Doc Hines and Mr. McEachern. Overall, it is his most readable and likeable masterpiece. And it leaves you wanting so much more.
The complex and ambiguous character of Joe Christmas alone could have been the source of three or four novels detailing different times in his life. While Christmas is hardly a likeable person, he is fascinating, hypnotic, a train wreck; you can't keep your eyes off him. His actions are morally ambiguous and inconsistent and yet fully understandable within his nature. As a creation he deserves to rank with Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Captain Ahab and Uncle Tom in the pantheon of American literary characters.
Faulkner has a big mission here. The novel exposes the evils of racism both in the South and among white, northern abolitionists. It traffics in religious symbolism while savaging religious fanatacism. And it leaves one with a great deal of memorable violent and sexual imagery. And that's just for starters. This book is deep, and while it's storytelling is largely non-linear, it is far more palatable than the other three, which tend to be confusing and obscure. Enjoy this one. If you've never read Faulkner, it's a great starter.
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Summary: Faulkner's Method and Meaning in Light in August
Review: Although Light In August originally begins with the story of Lena Grove in search for the father of her unborn child, William Faulkner presents one of literature's most tragic yet memorable depictions of racial injustice in his biracial character, Joe Christmas. The novel depicts Christmas's struggle for acceptance not only from the 1920's southern United States, but also from himself. Faulkner's use of picturesque diction and his accurate use of both white and black dialect in Alabama heighten his dramatization of Christmas's strife. Faulkner brilliantly presents four of the novel's main characters and their relationship to the community and human beings within the first four chapters. Oddly enough, all four of the characters are isolated from society in one way or another. Society isolates Lena Grove due to her illegitimate child; however, Grove also isolates herself because of her constant travel in search of the child's father. Reverend Gail Hightower is isolated from Jefferson, the small Alabama town in which most of the novel takes place, because of his wife's adulterous affairs. Byron Bunch, whose only friend is Hightower, isolates himself by choice in order to keep himself out of mischief. Finally, Joe Christmas isolates himself from the rest of the workers in the planing mill because of his mixed racial heritage. Christmas haughtily wears his city clothes in the midst of the other workers' overalls, and is therefore an easy target for ridicule and resentment. Throughout the novel, Faulkner utilizes the simple, irrational, and slightly ignorant white members of the community to contrast the respectability and hardship of the local blacks. Characters such as Joanna Burden, whose last name is synonymous to Rudyard Kipling's "white man's burden", represent the consequences of white society mixing with black. Faulkner uses biblical allusions throughout Light in August, which mostly surround Joe Christmas. Christmas's name symbolizes that of Jesus of Nazareth. He was born three days before the holiday of Christmas, and on Christmas Eve was found in a basket on the doorsteps of an orphanage. Christmas's adoptive father was a strict, white Presbyterian farmer named McEachern who often abused Christmas. Unbeknownst to McEachern, his wife secretly fed Christmas when her husband restricted him from eating and often gave him money. On one particular occasion after Mr. McEachern had beaten Christmas, Mrs. McEachern went up to Christmas's room and took off his shoes to wash his feet, just as Mary Magdalene did to Jesus when asking for forgiveness of her sins. After the murder of Joanna Burden, Joe Brown, Christmas's supposed friend and accomplice in their business of illegally selling whiskey, turns Christmas in for the murder in hopes of receiving the money reward for the murderer's capture. Here, Brown serves as a figure similar to Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Christ who eventually turned Him over to the Pharisees for a price of forty pieces of silver. Also, Reverend Hightower serves as a godly figure throughout the novel, keeping a moral balance over the other characters (especially Byron Bunch). Hightower even turns his back on Christmas when the police find Christmas in his home and is caught, just as God turned his back when Jesus was crucified. Written within only seven years of each other, Light in August can easily be compared with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Both novels depict the failure of the American Dream. Steinbeck utilizes the failure of the American Dream in his story of the Joads, a poor farm family from Oklahoma who travel to California in hopes of finding prosperity to escape the Dust Bowl. The Joads's dream ends in lost hope, however, when they find that California was a deception. Faulkner presents the failure of the dream to another underprivileged group in 1920's America - the African Americans. Even though Christmas is only half-black, Faulkner uses him to represent the negligence of justice presented to blacks in the southern U.S. Also, both authors display a slight similarity in writing style. Both authors appear to be excessive in words and have "middle" chapters in which they use for flashbacks and character and theme development. Although Light in August has over 500 pages, Faulkner employs each word and chapter. With his use of diction and the radical allusion of his main character Joe Christmas to Jesus Christ, Faulkner effectively introduces the themes of Light in August, which include the racial injustice among the South's black population, the conflict between the individual and the community, and the hardships of finding self-identity. Also, Faulkner captures the reader's attention with his characters in Light in August by giving shockingly realistic cases of religious fanaticism, racial hatred, and brutal violence in an attempt to accurately depict the moral and social psychology of human beings.
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Summary: A Great Faulkner Starter
Review: As this being my first book into the William Faulkner world I have come to the conclusion that once you pick up his books, you can't put them down. When you start to read, Faulkner writes about Lena Grove who was impregnated and her search to find that man. As she reaches Jefferson and goes to the planning mill hoping to see her so called soon to be husband, she talks to Byron Bunch. He tells her about two other workers that have been there in the past, Joe Christmas and Joe Brown. Faulkner then goes into a very interesting account of Christmas' life before and up to the events at the time. If you have never read Faulkner, this is the book to start with and might I add a wonderful read.
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Summary: Powerful
Review: Certainly not as hard to read as The Sound and The Fury or Absalom, Absalom! this is undoubtly one of Faulkner's bests.I read this novel for the first time 8 years ago but still some of its images are so vivid as though I had read it yesterday.
I think the genius of Faulkner resides in his mastery for making his characters perform a function inside the novel and at the same time making them so radically and tragically human. Faulkner is one of the true american masters because his novels deal with fundamental problems of the human soul. I find it really interesting that Faulkner is so popular in Latin America, and as a latin american myself I feel totally blown away by his novels, but ultimately Faulkner's appeal is universal and that is what makes him a classic. Indispensable for anyone.
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Summary: Another Faulkner Classic
Review: Don't be fooled by the title. William Faulkner's Light in August is not a cheerful, lighthearted book like the title might lead you to believe. It might as well be call Dark in September. Despite the misleading title, Faulkner has woven together another dark, stunning, and great novel. Any other author could not have achieved what he has done, which is, told an ordinary story in an extraordinary way. If you have ever read anything by Faulkner, however, this won't surprise you a bit.
The story opens on the dusty roads of Alabama. A young girl, Lena, has just left her home and is searching for the father of her child. She picks up a ride from a fellow who takes her to nearby town where she heard her former lover is living. She asks all around, but alas, she seems to be mistaken. Instead she encounters a man with a very similar name and he ends up taking care of her. His name is Byron Bunch. Ironically, the man she is searching for does happen to live in the same town as a bootlegger, but she won't find that out until later.
The story next shifts focus a Reverend Hightower. He was a former preacher who is haunted by visions of Confederate horseman. He used to have a congregation but they left him because of his adulterous wife. Byron Bunch visits him often and tells him the story of Joe Christmas, a drifter that he used to work with.
Next, and for the core of the novel, the story shifts focus to Joe Christmas. It tells of his abandonment at birth, his abusive, adopted parents, and his troubled teenage years. Eventually, after a tragedy occurs, he becomes a drifter on the road. No one cares about him and he doesn't care too much about anyone else either. Joe ends up making friends with a guy named Brown. Ironically, this guy named brown is the same person Lena is searching for at the beginning of the story. Brown and Christmas live in a cabin isolated from the rest of the town and engage together in the bootlegging business. Also, Christmas has a love affair with a woman who originally inhabited the isolated cabin. He and Brown stay there for a time until the major misfortune and plot twist take place.
The main issue Christmas faces is identity confusion. Supposedly he has black blood in him but looks like a white man. All of his life, this has scarred him deeply. He has never had an identity of his own. Is he white or black? The evils that happen to him revolve around this whole issue of race. I won't reveal how exactly the story unwinds itself at the end. All of the characters lives become connected in some way when the climax hits its peak as we take in the catastrophe that occurs.
Light in August is strewn loosely together in third person. Much of the story takes place in flashbacks. One of the pure brilliant elements of the novel is the matter of fact way Faulkner throws the issues of race, abuse, and loneliness at us. Among Faulkner's many geniuses is letting the reader decide how to react to the issues and situations presented. This novel is another shining example of this. It is as well written, unsentimental, and uncompromising as any of his other works.
Most of this novel is about a hard hearted drifter, but Faulkner also develops his supporting cast. The characters are as rich and deep as any Faulkner novel (perhaps part of the reason is that it is almost 200 pages longer than his average novels.)
Another praise of the novel is Faulkner's description. He paints strikingly original scenes with his words. Sentence fragments, jumbled together words and phrases, complex mixed with simple vocabulary. It has to be read to be believed. Faulkner has created another world of his own in this simple story. It has to be read to know exactly what I am talking about. Some of the passages will leave you breathless. I have never read an author that can create so much uniqueness with his words. This is not his most powerful or creative work, but it is a polished, sparkling gem in its own right. Light in August flows more like a collection of well drawn out scenes that a straight forward story.
Getting back to its title, Light in August, I wondered what it meant. After some research, I learned that Faulkner's wife used to comment that the light in the south seemed a bit different in August than in any other month. Perhaps this is what he had in mind when he named the novel. It is bit different than most reading you will ever do. This is the darkest Faulkner novel I have read, but it still has a certain glow to it, much like August days in the South do, I suppose.
Grade: A
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Summary: Faulkner tells a story
Review: Faulkner always tells a story, but he usually hides it behind a few layers of language-experimentation, so that what you end up with is more a narrative poem than a novel. I don't fault him for pushing language (except "Absalom, Absalom", which, as someone else commented, is unreadable) -- somebody has to do it. But, in this one, I get the sense that he sort of kicked back and more or less told his story straight. In the process he came up with his best novel which is a novel. I read this book four times in one year.
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