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Light Shines Forever

The document provides an analysis of the novel Light in August by William Faulkner. It summarizes the character Joanna Burden and compares her to another character Emily Grierson from another Faulkner novel. Both women are victims of controlling families and cling to principles instilled in them from a young age. They also have similarly tragic love stories. The analysis then explores how Joanna's tragedy stems more from her own conflicting personality and spiritual beliefs rather than societal conflicts like Emily. It praises Faulkner's use of stream of consciousness and vivid characters to highlight themes of racism, puritanism, and human persistence and pride in the American South.

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37 views2 pages

Light Shines Forever

The document provides an analysis of the novel Light in August by William Faulkner. It summarizes the character Joanna Burden and compares her to another character Emily Grierson from another Faulkner novel. Both women are victims of controlling families and cling to principles instilled in them from a young age. They also have similarly tragic love stories. The analysis then explores how Joanna's tragedy stems more from her own conflicting personality and spiritual beliefs rather than societal conflicts like Emily. It praises Faulkner's use of stream of consciousness and vivid characters to highlight themes of racism, puritanism, and human persistence and pride in the American South.

Uploaded by

hannahyehanchen
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Name: Chen Yehan

Light Shines Forever

“When anything gets to be a habit, it also manages to get a right good distance away from
truth and fact” (Faulkner 60). The sentence from Faulkner’s Light in August unexpectedly helps
explaining the phenomenon during the Spring Festival, which people are reluctant to break the
habit of paying New Year calls, even at the risk of catching the coronavirus. Light in August is
such a book of practical importance, in which the author shares his interpretation of social
regularity by creating complex characters and a series of stories with immortal themes.
The characters in the story show the picture scroll of Southern society all together. Some are
obsessed with their own family's past and interweave with others in some aspect. Joanna Burden,
although not a leading role, is one of these charming and pivotal characters, who desires to uplift
the black race. She easily brings to mind another female role in Faulkner’s imaginary county of
Yoknapatawpha, Emily Grierson from A Rose for Emily.
First, they are both the victim of family tragedy. Family members’ being controlling, they
can’t live as their wish. Instilled with the strong puritanism and racialism, Joanna clings to the
principle of Puritanism; likewise, Emily is deprived of the right to chase happiness by her father
and clings to the glory of Southern aristocracy(Guo 2). Additionally, they both have a similarly
pessimistic love story. When faced with their lover, Joanna draws a gun and Emily prepares the
poison.
However, unlike Emily, whose tragedy is the result of the conflict between society and
herself, Joanna’s tragedy has more to do with her own personality. In Light in August, Faulkner
uses three chapters to narrate in great detail what happens to Joanna, creating a more mysterious
and attractive female image. For Joanna, years of living alone and regularly makes her cold and
indifferent; a man’s breaking into her life rekindles her enthusiasm(Zuo 3). Spiritually, taught from
childhood that she lives with “the curse which God put on a whole race”(Faulkner 199), she views
black people “not as people, but as a thing”(Faulkner 199) and commit herself to help them as a
lifelong atonement. Meanwhile, she feels the urge to satisfy her physiological needs as a female
even “by damning herself forever to the hell of her forefathers, by living not alone in sin but in
filth”(Faulkner 203). As Russell writes in The Conquest of Happiness, “The happy man is the man
who does not suffer from either of these failures of unity, whose personality is neither divided
against itself nor pitted against the world”(190), Joanna is inevitably doomed to fail in love with
the nature of split self. Eventually, she suffers from this kind of disintegration, becoming agitated
about the relationship and ending in death.
Apart for the vivid characters and stories, the novel is challenging and charming in its

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Name: Chen Yehan

description as well. Writing about the scene of packing things and hurrying off, the author use the
stream of consciousness to reveal the plot, which may be confusing and obscure at first without
punctuation. “Consciousness,” according to William James, “does not appear to itself chopped up
in bits...It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most
naturally described”(148). Thus, to have the exactly same perceptions with characters is as
difficult as to grasp water. Instead, by relaxing yourself, letting go of the traditional grammar, you
will relish the flowing pictures that Faulkner creates for readers.
Through the book the author highlights some perpetual themes including racism, puritanism,
self-conflict and so on. Therefore, Light in August would be of interest to whom want to learn
more about the culture of the American South and explore the inner persistence and pride of
human beings.

Works Cited
Bertrand, Russell. The Conquest of Happiness[M]. New York: Horace Liveright, 1930.
Faulkner, William. Light in August[M]. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.
Guo, Jianying.[郭建英], 泣血的玫瑰——论乔安娜·伯顿与爱米丽·格里尔生的爱情悲剧[J].
安徽文学(下半月), 2009, 卷缺失(10): 219-220.
William, James. The Principles of Psychology- Vol. 1[M]. New York: Holt Dover Publications,
1950.
Zuo, Guifeng.[左贵凤], 被困的灵魂——《八月之光》中乔安娜·伯顿的双重性分析[J]. 长春
师范学院学报, 2012, 31(2): 105-108.

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