Huck Finn
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Summary
Light in August creates a very dark atmosphere throughout the novel. The beginning of the novel already introduces the hardships that the characters are facing. First, Lena Grove, who travels from a very far away land just to find the father of her unborn child. Second, Joe Christmas who finds himself lost for being biracial. Third, Hightower, who is haunted by his past.
Archetypal Analysis/ Mythological Criticism
– from the greek roots arche tupos which means “first type”
-finding the original pattern from which all other copies are made
– stories that have symbol images
Symbols:
*Faulkner uses the archetypal motif of hope. Looking at the title Light in August, he uses the light as a positive life symbols and August being the opposite. These symbols demonstrate that there is always hope during the darkness of days.
* The title is inspired by the lovely light that shine through Mississippi.
1. Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, I have come from Alabama: a fur piece. All the way from Alabama a-walking..
This is the very first sentence of the novel. Notice that a wagon is already present in the beginning and will always be throughout the novel because she hitches wagons to move from place to place in searching for the father of her unborn child. It represents the journey of facing issues toward love, race, religion and violence.
P30 (Lena Grove reached the place where the father of her unborn child is said to be in)
2. “..she sees two columns of smoke: the one the heavy density of burning coal above a tall stack, the other a tall yellow column standing apparently from among a clump of trees some distance beyond the town. “Thats a house burning,” the driver syas. “See?”
In this passage Faulkner uses the smoke as a sense of foreboding that something unfortunate will happen. In the beginning of the novel, everything is blurry and unclear because of the successive unfortunate events that fate has set upon the characters.
P78 (This words belong to the man who fell in love with Lena Grove)
“..with her watching me, sitting there, swolebellied, watching me with eyes that a man could not have lied to if he wanted. And me babbling on, that smoke right yonder in plain sight like it was put there to warn me, to make me watch my mouth only I never had the sense to see it.”
This passage shows how the symbols affect the characters. Byron Bunch interprets this as a signal to stop giving info about Lenas husband.
P118
3. He just sat there, not moving, until after a while he heard the clock two miles away strike twelve. Then he rose and moved toward the house. He didnt go fast. He didnt think then Something is going to happen to me. Something is going to happen to me
P466
4. Now the final copper light of afternoon fades; now the street beyond the low maples and the low signboard is prepared and empty, framed by the study window like a stage. He can remember how when he was young, after he first came to Jefferson from the seminary, how that fading copper light would seem almost audible, like a dying yellow fall of trumpets dying into an interval of silence and waiting, out of which they would presently come. Already, even before the falling horns had ceased, it would seem to him that he could hear the beginning thunder not yet louder than a whisper, a rumor, in the air.
In this passage, the light here is shown as fading because in the story, there are characters that escape from the light or reality. An example is Miss Burden who is always inside her house..
Patterns of Characters
1.One of the main characters in the novel, Joe Christmas, follows the fate of Jesus Christ. Starting by the name itself, both initials are the same. Joe Christmas arrived at the orphanage on Christmas day while Jesus was born on Christmas.
~Passage that shows parallelism to Christ
Christmas sleeps by a spring, his back to a tree, and he rises, “stretching his cramped and stiffened back,waking his tingling muscles”. Later, Christmas walks through the streets of Jefferson, looking “morelonely than a lone telephone pole in the middle of a desert”. When chapter 5 closes, Christmas is again sitting with his back to a tree. “When he heard eleven strike tonight he was sitting with his back against a tree inside the broken gate”
Throughout the novel Joe Christmas appears to be always leaning into a wood or a stand, which may represent the cross that Jesus Christ carried to Calvary. The cross means sufferings, so Joe Christmas cross is his being biracial. In the end, Joe Christmas was being captured and killed. His fate is the same as Him.
2. Lena Grove is the Earth Mother because she us associated with giving birth. Her labor marked the death of Joe Christmas but the baby is the resurrection. The setting of the labor is very similar to Jesus labor.
Lena grove is the light in August because the new born baby affected all the characters in a good way. Byron bunch is transformed from a very desperate and lonesome figure to a loving person, who willingly will stand as Lenas husband. Hightower who lives in the shadow of his past helps deliver the child. After the birth, he felt alive for once in his life.
3. “I had seen and known negroes since I could remember. I just looked at them as I did at rain, or furniture, or food or sleep. But after that I seemed to see them for the first time not as a people but as a thing, a shadow in which I lived, we lived, all white people, all other people. I thought of all the children coming forever and ever into the world, white, with the black shadow already falling upon them before they drew breathe. And I seemed to see the black shadow in the shape of a cross. And it seemed like the white babies were struggling, even before they drew breathe, to escape from the shadow that was not only upon them but beneath them too, flung out like their