Focusing on the Margins: Light in August and Social Change by Abdul-Razzak Al-Barhow

In William Faulkners Light in August (1932), a number of figures actively engaged in social change are introduced as Joanna Burden narrates to her lover Joe Christmas the history of her ancestors, and as the defrocked minister Gail Hightower reflects, while sitting in the window of his study, on the history of his family, which was narrated to him by the familys ex-slave when he was a child. Hightowers father was an abolitionist even though he would neither eat food grown and cooked by, nor sleep in a bed prepared by, a negro slave (355, 351). Joannas ancestors received a commission from the government in Washington to go down to the South to help with the freed negroes, and two of them were shot dead by the slaveholder John Sartoris over a question of Negro votes in a state election (189). Joanna, the last Burden in the South, carries on with this commission until she is killed by Joe Christmas.1 The appeal of the engagement with social change in Faulkners text does not lie in these characters, however, and the way the Burdens perform their commission remains, after all, questionable. Instead, the force of Light in August derives from its ability to dramatize the social and racial contradictions, which are set in motion by Joe Christmass indeterminate racial origins. The need for, if not the inevitability of, social change in racial relations is made even more pressing through Faulkners
The Southern Literary Journal, volume xlii, number 2, spring 2010 2010 by The Southern Literary Journal and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature. All rights reserved.

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demonstration of how the racial ideology that holds this society together is the same ideology that will tear it apart. The determination of the white community in Jefferson to guard the binaries of their ideology and maintain the fixity of its categories, we come to know, is no other than its unwillingness to admit the vulnerability of the very basis of its ideology and the malleable nature of its categories, as the incident of Joannas death has revealed to them. Anthropologist Mary Douglas, who interprets rituals relating to the human body by regarding the body as a symbol of society, observes that all margins are dangerous. . . . Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins (Purity 115, 121). Douglass observation is helpful in understanding the way Light in August dramatizes the process of social change by demonstrating the vulnerability of the southern structure of ideas at its margins. Faulkners text chooses its main characters from the margins of the white community in Jefferson and makes the way these marginal characters engage with their communitys structure of ideas the subject of the communitys verbal exchange. As John N. Duvall notes, marginal members of the white community in Faulkners texts function to counter racist and patriarchal proscriptiveness (Faulkners xvii). As it dramatizes social relations in the form of talk, or verbal exchange of meanings and values, Light in August examines social change on a linguistic level as a shift in the semantic weight of categories and binaries toward a performative view of race, in contrast to the biological concept that the communitys voices are desperately trying to maintain. Social change is examined further in the overall structure of the book in the way the three stories of Lena Grove, Joe Christmas, and Gail Hightower are juxtaposed. Christmass violent story is framed by the more optimistic stories of Hightower and Lena, which not only dramatise examples of the possibility of breaking free from the fetters of society, be it in the form of racist and patriarchal ideology, institutional religion, or the ghost of the past in the form of dead father figures, but also of contributing positively to social change and looking forward to a new social order based on love and acknowledgment of human needs and emotions. In contrast to the violent deaths of Joanna and Christmas, positive change in the stories of Hightower and Lena is suggested by both the birth of Lenas baby and the rebirth that both Byron Bunch and Hightower experience as Bunch falls in love with Lena and as Hightower acts as a doctor delivering her baby. Sixty years after the attempt of Joanna Burdens ancestors to help African Americans get to the ballot box united white southerners in Jefferson under the leadership of John Sartoris, who killed Joannas brother and

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grandfather, Joannas assumed murder by Joe Christmas unites Percy Grimms army to preserve order and let the law take its course. This unity results, according to Grimm, from the fact that [i]t is the right of no civilian to sentence a man to death (339). This campaign ends with Grimm himself killing and castrating Joe Christmas for killing Joanna, not as the Yankee whom they used to shout nigger lover after in the streets, but as a white woman, who has been killed and very likely raped by a black man. Joannas social status is changed to protect a basic tenet of the southern racist ideology, which is the unnaturalness of the relationship between white women and black men. Because such relationships between white women and black men are perceived by the white community to be unnatural, they can be conceived of as taking place in one way only: rape. Even though the community members are not sure that Joanna has been raped, they rush to establish the rape as fact, and indeed they would be very disappointed if they were to be proven wrong: they knew, believed and hoped that she has been ravished too: at least once before her throat was cut and at least once afterward (216). Joanna becomes suddenly integrated into the white community because combining her assumed murder with rape would not only allow the community members to read the incident according to their conception of the relationship between white women and black men, and consequently assure themselves about the soundness of their beliefs, but also would provide them with a justification for their use of violence against black men. Even though the community seems to be quite oblivious to this change in Joannas social status, which might be also explained by its engagement with the challenge that Joe Christmas has presented in relation to the word nigger, the dramatic change in Joannas status from a nigger lover to a violated white woman demonstrates that the categories of the community are not stable. The extent of this change might be appreciated better if we take into consideration that throughout her life, Joanna was marginalized by the community because of her association with black people and because of her familys abolitionist history. Early in the novel, the omniscient narrator presents the communitys opinion of Joanna: A Yankee, a lover of negroes, about whom in the town there is still talk of queer relations with negroes in the town and out of it (37). The way Joannas image is formulated in the towns collective consciousness reveals that talk is an important tool, which the community employs in order to protect its margins and ensure the conformity of its individuals to the values and meanings it stands for.2 Undesirable

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interaction between white and black people and the fearful possibility of miscegenation between the two races are guarded against by using stigmatizing expressions like a lover of negroes. Suspected sexual relationships between white and black people are made to look unnatural by describing them as queer and by referring to contact with black people in terms of mixing up, which has obvious connotations of criminality. In his explanation of ideological strategies, Terry Eagleton points out that hegemonic groups try to make their ideologies look natural: Successful ideologies are often thought to render their beliefs natural and self-evident to identify them with the common sense of a society so that nobody could imagine how they might ever be different. . . . this process . . . involves the ideology in creating as tight a fit as possible between itself and social reality, thereby closing the gap into which the leverage of critique could be inserted. Social reality is redefined by the ideology to become coextensive with itself, in a way which occludes the truth that the reality in fact generated the ideology. (58) 3 Indeed, the white community in Jefferson is doing the same thing: transferring the codes of their dominance into facts. This strategy is also used with Gail Hightower, who, like Joanna Burden, becomes ostracized from the community because of the scandal that is created by his wifes death in a Memphis hotel, which is blamed on Hightowers assumed relationship to his black female cook. Byron Bunch, who plays an important role in conveying the news of the town and its ways of thinking to Hightower and to us as readers, is told about how he [Hightower] had made his wife go bad and commit suicide because he was not a natural husband, a natural man, and that the negro woman was the reason (55). Naturalizing the ideology of the dominant group helps in blocking social change for it creates, as Eagleton explains, a vicious circle in the relationship of the ideology of the dominant group to social reality: the ideology could only be transformed if the reality was such as to allow it to become objectified; but the ideology processes the reality in ways which forestall this possibility (58). Eagleton clarifies this further: Ideology freezes history into a second nature, presenting it as spontaneous, inevitable and so unalterable (59). On the surface, the community in Jefferson presents an image of this vicious circle, to the degree that the community looks static. As a result, critics such as Myra Jehlen, who describes the inner lives of Faulkners characters as essentially linings for selves tailored to unalterable social patterns (1), offer problematic readings of

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the text that do not account for the change that is taking place below the surface. Though this strategy is to some extent effective in blocking substantial social change for a time, it must not suggest that the communitys binaries and categories were, even during this period, stable. Social change does not need to be drastic to the extent of replacing one hegemonic group with another. As Light in August relies heavily on voices and talk, change comes at the level of language. Mary Douglas explains that the feeling that we are being controlled by an external, fixed environment of ideas is an illusion, and adds that if we can realise how much a language changes in a lifetime, without the speakers recognizing their own contribution, we can realise how rituals and beliefs change. They are extremely plastic. Douglas explains the changing nature of rituals by their being energetically manipulated by people who evade their implications in their own lives if they can, but use them for hitting each other and forcing one another to conform to something they have in mind (Couvade 170). Both Richard Godden and Richard Gray emphasize the role of verbal exchange of ideas in the process of change and draw on Fredric Jamesons emphasis on the privileged meeting places of collective life in facilitating this exchange in Faulkners county (Godden 236, Gray 180, Jameson 13). Light in August and The Hamlet (1940), probably more than Faulkners other novels, focus on the role of public spaces where verbal exchange takes place. Like Varners store in Frenchmans Bend, Light in August follows the communitys talk in the square, the porch of Mrs Beards boarding house, countryside churchyards, and so on. Like the development of Joannas social status, the development of the central term nigger is another example of change within this seemingly stable community. When the community is told that Christmas has black blood, their verbal exchange focuses on Christmass behaviour before and after the murder to tally it with the behavioural pattern which they associate with the word nigger, and which they believe is determined by black blood. In this way, Christmass challenge to the hegemonic group extends beyond his crime, which involves killing and raping a white woman, which Diane Roberts describes as perhaps the most profound psychic assault on the southern sense of integrity (169).4 Christmas becomes, as Godden describes him, a pressure point who establishes that rituals and beliefs change even in apparently static communities (234). The community believes that Christmas has challenged them because he managed to hide his black blood and pass as a white man for three years. This challenge is regarded as more threatening than

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murder because it undermines the fixity of the communitys categories of whiteness and blackness. If whiteness can be acted, then the white/ black binary becomes vulnerable because it becomes determined by performance rather than biology, which they have so far relied on to naturalize the rest of their practices. Joel Williamson notes that southerners came to fear hidden blackness, the blackness within seeming whiteness and began to look with great suspicion upon mulattoes who looked white, white people who behaved as black, and a whole congeries of aliens in their midst (464 465). Though the main response of the dominant group, fear was not the only response to hidden miscegenation. James A. Snead explains that extreme racial division elicits the desire for mixing or miscegenation, which he regards as the Souths feared, forbidden, denied, yet pervasive release from societal division (Light 156). That the community members might respond in conflicting ways to miscegenation subverts the fixity of racial boundaries. Furthermore, it demands that the white community remain on constant watch, not only for intruders from outside but also for traitors from within. Even though Christmas succeeds in dramatizing the inappropriateness of the biological definition of the term nigger, and provides a compelling evidence of the validity of its performative nature, the community does not give in easily. Rather than accept the semantic shift of their categories, they are outraged by the discrepancy between their categories and social reality. The communitys voice, which is personalized as talk, expresses this outrage: Then yesterday morning he come into Mottstown in broad daylight, on a Saturday with the town full of folks. He went into a white barbershop like a white man, and because he looked like a white man they never suspected him. Even when the bootblack saw how he had on a pair of second hand brogans that were too big for him, they never suspected. . . . And then he walked the streets in broad daylight, like he owned the town, walking back and forth with people passing him a dozen times and not knowing it . . . . He never acted like either a nigger or a white man. That was it. That was what made the folks so mad. (263) According to the expectations of the community members the clerks, the idle, the countrymen in overalls Christmas, as a nigger, ought to have been skulking and hiding in the woods, muddy and dirty and running (262 263). As we see, the collective voice of the white community admits that Christmas does not fit its own formula of black peoples

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behavior, which suggests that there is a divergence between its ideology and social reality, which, in turn, suggests that its ideology was not generated by social reality, which, ultimately, delegitimizes that ideology in the way it becomes no longer natural, but rather designed by the hegemonic group to serve its own interests. In contrast to the voice of the common people, who do not hide their own confusion, Gavin Stevens, the District Attorney and one of the main speakers of the dominant ideology, seems more assured about his own explanation of Christmass behavior.5 Stevens, who is echoed by McCaslin Edmonds when he talks about the interaction of black and Indian blood in Sam Fathers in Go Down, Moses, finds in the myth of the tragic mulatto a suitable explanation for the behaviour of Christmas. According to Stevenss different theory, it is the white blood that guides Christmas to do rational things and motivates him to save himself in contrast to his black blood, which swept him by his own desire beyond the aid of any man, swept him up into that ecstasy out of a black jungle where life has already ceased before the heart stops and death is desire and fulfilment (337 338). This reference to the death desire in relation to Christmass black blood is an attempt to explain why Christmas did not try to shoot Percy Grimm with the loaded pistol, which he was holding in his hand when Grimm shot him. Here, Stevens echoes the myth that African Americans not only lack the willingness to resist violence, but also desire death, a convenient interpretation of the denial of blacks the right to defend themselves against violence during slavery.6 We know that although Christmas, as a child, was trained by his foster father to accept violence, he resisted Mr. McEachern when he became able to do so, and when he leaves him for good, he does so believing that he has killed him. Furthermore, Christmas tries to save himself by running and he does not shoot because it becomes obvious that he will be killed anyway. Despite Stevenss attempt to restore the vicious circle between social reality and the ideology of his community, which he tries to present as natural in the sense that it rests on biology, the ideology becomes demystified to a great extent, which is an essential part of the process of social change.7 Since we as readers know more about Christmass life and his relationship to Joanna than the community does, it will be useful to examine Christmass testing of the binaries of whiteness and blackness and compare his relationship to Joanna to the communitys reconstruction of this relationship. This tension between perceptions not only demystifies the communitys reconstruction of this relationship, but also demonstrates, in the way it dramatizes Christmass and Joannas violent ends,

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the need for social change, which the destructive effects of the racist ideology make even more pressing. Moreover, the books complex treatment of racial identity suggests that the communitys confusion regarding Christmass racial identity and his confusing behaviour is an extension of Christmass wavering between white and black identities, which might, at a superficial level, demonstrate the validity of Stevenss blood theory. Christmass wavering, however, is not driven by any certain information about his parentage, rather by instilling the racist ideology of the hegemonic community into him as a white boy and then exposing him to the claim that he is a nigger through talk. Christmas is not black in color, and the book does not provide any firm evidence that he has black blood. His mother is white and his fathers blackness is established, as his grandmother explains to Hightower in the presence of her husband and Byron Bunch, by relying on a claim made by one man only: because it was just that circus man that said he was a nigger and maybe he never knew for certain, and besides he was gone too and we likely wouldnt ever see him again (284). The equal claim made by Christmass mother, Millie Hines, that Christmass father is a Mexican is not given any credibility. Indeed, it is important to add, that Christmass grandfather, Doc Hines, does not wait to hear the circus man to establish the blackness of Christmass father. When he explains to Hightower and Bunch, he bases his claim on his fanatic conviction that he could recognize evil, which he obviously identified with dark complexion. Speaking in the third person to buttress the objectivity of his judgment, he says that his daughter was Telling old Doc Hines, that knowed better, that he was a Mexican. When old Doc Hines could see in his face the black curse of God Almighty (281). Unfortunately, Hiness conviction is transmitted to Christmas as Hiness manipulation of the children in the orphanage to make them call Christmas nigger acquires strength when Christmas is called You little nigger bastard! (94) by the dietician. Neither Christmass life in the orphanage nor his longer stay at his foster family seems to wear out this deeply entrenched impression in his memory. The details of Christmass relationship to Joanna demystify some of the communitys basic assumptions about the relationship of white women to African American men. Even though Christmas and Joanna communicate verbally, their relationship remains sexual first and foremost. And contrary to usual rumours about black sexuality it is important to stress that both she and Christmas assume that Christmas is partly black it is Joannas sexuality which is presented as excessive,

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which subverts the myth of white womens purity (King 37). Thadious Davis comments that in presenting Christmas, the man who may have Negro blood, as approaching the affair with some degree of rationality and without being completely caught in the throes of physical pleasure, Faulkner operates against one set of beliefs regarding blacks and sexuality particularly beliefs about black men and white women (139). Ironically it is Joanna who repeats the word Negro in her sexual encounters with Joe, showing that it is she who has an excessive, uncontrollable sexuality.8 Even though the dramatization of this relationship subverts some of the myths that are circulated in the community, this does not contribute to any subversion as far as the community is concerned, for it never comes to know about it, just as it never comes to know whether or not Joanna was raped by Christmas. This uncertainty places readers at a vantage point from which we perceive and critique the communitys response to the challenge it faces. Christmass behaviour displays a great deal of fatalism, and his often quoted sentence: Something is going to happen to me suggests his surrender to that fatalism (91). Yet Christmas demonstrates at crucial moments in his life that he can act positively; his refusal of Joannas suggestion that he attend a black college and adopt the racial identity of a black man as well as his refusal to pray when she tries to coerce him to do so indicate his sense of agency. Why Christmas refuses Joannas proposal might be explained in different ways. Christmas thinks that to accept Joannas proposal would deny all the thirty years that he has lived to make him what he chose to be (199). Davis regards Christmass refusal as a progressive impulse, but one doomed to failure because it cuts so sharply against the grain of traditional southern life and thought (133). Indeed, this refusal of a ready-made identity might be regarded as Christmass greatest achievement: living as a human being rather than a rigid social construction. And even though there is the possibility that Christmas does not accept the identity of a black man because of his fear of abjection, which he associates with black people because of the racist ideology that he was brought up with, his refusal to pray is a rejection of fanaticism, which is used by several characters in the book to justify racism and violence. Joannas insistence on solidifying Christmass identity as a black man and her determination to force him to comply with her fanaticism lead to the violent ends of them both and demonstrate the destructive nature of this ideology. Christmass refusal to pray sets an example for rebellion against fanaticism, which, though it ends tragically in his case, is adopted successfully by both Hightower and Byron Bunch, who

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embark on contributing to social change after they give up prayer and understand religion in a new way: that peace in which to sin and be forgiven . . . is the life of man (366). As further details of Joannas death are revealed to whites in the community, they realize that Christmass challenge to them was by no means limited to his assumed murder and rape of Joanna Burden, but also included the seduction of a white man. His relationship to Joe Brown, which undermines segregation and white binarism, is more challenging than that with Joanna Burden, though the community does not seem to dwell very much on it in comparison to the murder of Joanna and the burning of her house. Seducing Brown is supposed to be more difficult than seducing Joanna because unlike Joanna, who is an outsider, Brown is related (though tenuously) to the community. It is true that he is a foreigner in Jefferson, but he is a southerner and he subscribes to the same racist ideology. However, Brown, as a poor white, lives at the margin of society, where the structure of southern ideas is vulnerable. If the fixity of the communitys binaries is defended at the center of the community by confident explanations, like Gavin Stevenss different theory, then change is seeping at the margins where the individuals who live there are compelled by their economic conditions, and sometimes they are willing to compromise these binaries if it is to their benefit. Examining Browns example, we find that it is dictated initially by his economic conditions, but later he becomes seduced by the kind of life he leads with Christmas, which includes trips to brothels in Memphis and easy money from selling whiskey, which allows him to give up his job at the sawmill and ride all day in a new car. John Duvall observes that in Faulkners case, there are in-between characters Caucasians who instantiate blackness in ways that complicate the Southern binarism. He goes on to distinguish two classes of such people: 1) those characters who exhibit sexual and or gender ambiguity and 2) poor whites (Strange 108). Brown undermines his whiteness in the eyes of the community on both grounds. We are not sure that there is a homosexual relationship between Brown and Christmas; there are, however, strong suggestions in the roles they play in their relationship. It is obvious that Christmas dominates Brown, and Brown actually admits that to the sheriff, defending himself that any man in his position would have done as he did: way out there, alone in that cabin with him and nobody to hear you if you was to holler. Youd have been scared too (76). Byron Bunch, who despite his celibate life is quite perceptive in reading sexual politics in Jefferson, explains to Hightower that it was very difficult for Brown to acknowl-

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edge that he lived with Christmas, but he did so to defend himself when the suspicions against him in the murder of Joanna became quite strong: he had knowed that if it come to a pinch, this would save him, even if it was almost worse for a white man to admit what he would have to admit than to be accused of the murder itself (75). Moreover, Christmas beats Brown in a manner similar to his attempts to dominate Joanna sexually, and he discloses the secret of what he believes are his racial origins to Brown in the cabin just as he did with many prostitutes in intimate situations in bedrooms. When Brown accuses the town of being fooled for three years by Christmas, who was living with a white woman during this period, the blame is directed back against Brown for failing in his role to protect a white woman, which undermines both his whiteness and his masculinity. Why Brown decides to continue with his partnership with Christmas after he is told by Christmas that he is partly black might be explained by Browns awareness that his whiteness has already been compromised by his economic position and by the kind of job he has to do at the sawmill. When he explains to the sheriff why he did not know at what time he saw the fire in Joannas house, he says: Do you expect a man doing the work of a nigger slave at a sawmill to be rich enough to own a watch? (74). Browns artificial blackness is far from being an individual case; rather, it is a symptom of a substantial social transformation during the Great Migration, when a class of poor whites replaced African Americans deserting the South altogether or moving from the countryside to urban centers within the South.9 Barbara Ladd, who maintains that the Spanish-American War and World War I changed the relationship of race and class in the South, explains that the economic consequences of this migration during the war years were immediate: [t]he era actually did witness a breakdown in economic segregation (164 165). Duvall observes that the migration further blurred the boundary between nigger and white trash. In terms of Southern epistemology, he writes, there became a need for someone to stand in for the rural Negro who was migrating to urban areas or out of the South entirely. This need is doubled in the realm of economics (Strange 111). As Brown undermines white masculinity and the binaries of the community, he is regarded as a suspect rather than as a witness, and that is why he is not released from prison even though the sheriff is convinced that Christmas was the murderer. Despite this punishment, Brown is given a chance to occupy his previous role in the community provided that he takes his responsibility as a white man, which involves marrying

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Lena and taking care of their baby. When Brown refuses this offer, which he is presented with as he is driven by a policeman to the cabin in which Lena and her baby live, and escapes, he shows that social change is more possible than ever because there are whites who believe that the values of the white community are meant to serve the dominant rich. Though his decision involves neglecting Lena and her baby, Browns contribution to social change is important because it indicates that there are more whites ready to compromise racial binaries. His hysterical exit from the town is motivated by his strong conviction that he was denied justice. Justice, he says aloud. That was all. Just my rights. And them bastards with their little tin stars, all sworn everyone of them on oath, to protect a American citizen. The way he contemplates joining the communists I be a dog if it aint enough to make a man turn downright bowlsheyvick need not be taken seriously, but it indicates a real break with the white community (330). Because Light in August consists of three seemingly separate narratives, some critics have pointed out that the book lacks structural cohesiveness. Irving Howe, for example, observes that Light in August suffers from a certain structural incoherence (209). The three narratives, however, are related to each other in different ways, and the topic of social change is a major linking theme. Like Brown and Christmas, Gail Hightower, Byron Bunch and Lena Grove contribute to the vulnerability of white southern ideology by actively engaging with social change. Christmass central story, in which the possibility of change is met with fierce resistance, is juxtaposed with the stories of Hightower and Lena, which examine examples of redeeming change. Doreen Fowler observes that the stories of Lena Grove and Hightower appear to form concentric circles around the horrific center, the murder of Joanna Burden, as if the dark narrative at the novels core needed somehow to be contained (64). Hightowers and Lenas stories are strongly linked to Christmass, acting as a comment on the development of Christmass presence in Jefferson and the death of Joanna, which often takes the form of Bunch discussing with Hightower the towns response to Christmass act along with Bunchs growing interest in Lena. Bunch links the three stories further as he brings Christmass grandparents to Hightowers house and later on to the cabin, behind Joanna Burdens burned house, where Hightower delivers Lenas baby in their presence. Initially, both Hightower and his friend Bunch follow the developments of Joannas murder with a degree of detachment, especially on the part of Bunch, who acts as a reporter updating Hightower and the reader

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on what is going on in the town. The first time Bunch talks to Lena about Joannas burning house, however, he reiterates the towns racist view of Joanna in a way which suggests that he partakes of that view. They say, he tells Lena, she is still mixed up with niggers. Visits them when they are sick, like they was white. Wont have a cook because it would have to be a nigger cook. Folks say she claims that niggers are the same as white folks (42). When Hightower is told that Christmas has black blood, which strongly suggests that he will be lynched, Hightower responds differently from the rest of the community. His comment, Think, Byron; what it will mean when the people if they catch . . . Poor man. Poor mankind (77), suggests his disapproval of lynching and, more importantly, his inability to do anything to change this seeming unalterable fate. Hightowers involvement in Christmass story remains limited even when Bunch has become deeply involved in Christmass story to the extent that he persuades Hightower, when he brings Christmass grandparents to his house, to provide an alibi for Christmas. Bunch persuades Hightower to do so even at the expense of his reputation, which was already damaged by the scandal that surrounded the death of his wife. Bunchs idea of an alibi consists of Hightowers claim that Christmas used to come to his place every night, including the night of Joannas murder, which comes very close to admitting a homosexual relationship with Christmas. When Hightower acts according to Bunchs suggestion, which comes very late when Christmas comes into his house as a refugee, his engagement with Christmass story, and with social change, deepens. It is significant that Hightowers and Bunchs responses have become different from that of their community, especially given the fact that Hightower, in his previous role as a religious leader, and Bunch, as a leader of a choir in a countryside church, were instruments of institutional religion, which is strongly linked with racism in Christmass story. The various characters who write Christmas into existence justify their violence and racism by their religious belief.10 Michael Lackey maintains that Grimm, Burden, Hines, and McEachern are the most dangerously ideological characters in the novel precisely because they convince themselves that they are non-ideological (84).11 Like them, Hightower used to be an instrument of death and oppression when he was part of the religious institution, which blinded him to his wifes suffering.12 Then, Hightower did not see the danger of his ideology especially to what might be designated as other in his society, African Americans and women, including his wife. When Hightower is ostracized from society, he becomes able to reflect on his society from

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the outside and see it for what it is. The transformation of Hightowers personality takes a very long time because his movement from the center of his society to the margin is not accompanied by a shift in perspective. After his ostracism, Hightower spends a long time thinking of himself in his old role, of which he is reminded every night by the sound of church bells. Even though this period is characterized by Hightowers inactivity and appears static, it is during this period that Hightowers ties with the religious institution and its ideology become gradually weaker. Breaking with this ideology and the resulting change in Hightowers character are revealed when he succeeds in delivering Lenas baby. This change is expressed in physical and mental terms: Hightower feels active and energetic, which initially suggests a return to his old fascination with heroism and violence; he chooses to read Henry IV instead of Tennyson. Pondering his relationship to his wife, he admits to himself that he was an instrument of her despair and shame. He concludes that he behaved as he did because he was an instrument of someone outside himself, musing, I know that for fifty years I have not even been clay: I have been a single instant of darkness in which a horse galloped and a gun crashed. Hightower does not live as a real human being because he lives in the tales that the familys ex-slave has told him about his grandfathers heroism. He is born anew as he ceases to be his dead grandfather on the instant of his death (369). As Hightower reflects on his life further, he finds in religion and the church system another destructive factor. According to his newly acquired vision, the religious institution appears to be the antithesis of what it is meant to be. He seems to see the churches of the world like a rampart, like one of those barricades of the middleages planted with dead and sharpened stakes, against truth and against . . . peace (366). If we compare the development of Hightowers ideas and values to the development of the ideology of his community, we find that Hightowers development takes place, at least in the final stage, consciously. The intense impact of the transformation of Hightowers beliefs is suggested in a parallel physical transformation, which unburdens him from the weights which used to constrain him. Then it seems to him that some ultimate damned flood within him breaks and rushes away. He seems to watch it, feeling himself losing contact with earth, lighter and lighter, emptying, floating. This transformation, which leaves his body empty and lighter than a forgotten leaf and even more trivial than flotsam (370), convinces Hightower that he does not need to pray or even to try to pray. As Hightower is transformed he becomes able to engage in social change: he

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gives up his old place in the window of his study and engages with society. In his new role, Hightower becomes a force of life as he succeeds in delivering Lenas baby, an act which he attempted before in his role as an instrument of death with a pregnant black woman and which resulted in a stillborn baby. Now Hightower believes that society can be changed and that Christmass fate is no longer unalterable; it is this belief that propels Hightower to provide Christmas with an alibi at the expense of Hightowers own reputation. In parallel to Hightowers personal transformation, his image in the towns collective consciousness begins to change as well. This change is suggested in the new way his sign, which he installs in the street after the death of his wife and the loss of his job at the church, might be read. This sign contains his title DD, which is read first negatively like Hester Prynnes scarlet A. When Bunch first comes to Jefferson and asks about the meaning of DD, he is told it stands for Done Damned. As Hester manages to transform the meaning of her A from Adultery to Angel or Able, Hightowers transformation from an instrument of death into an instrument of life, transforms the meaning of his sign. When the doctor, who is brought by Bunch to help Lena in labour, comes late and finds that Hightower has done his work for him, he addresses him as doctor, thus reversing Hightowers title to a positive meaning: that of a doctor, not in the theological sense as Hightower initially intended it to mean, but in the medical sense of helping young lives come into existence and defending older ones against death and disease. In the second story of the novel, the lifestyle of Byron Bunch prior to meeting Lena Grove is characterized by a rigid self-discipline and almost a complete adherence to the values of his society despite the fact that he lives on the margins of this society. Bunch is faster to change than Hightower; he is less blinded by the ideology of his community. Even before meeting Lena, Bunchs secret visits to Hightowers house, which he understands the town would punish violently, are an instance of his willingness to act against the communitys approval. Bunch changes as he meets and falls in love with Lena and his change begins in the form of taking a five-minute break from his job at the sawmill, which eventually turns out to be not only a break with the mill for good, but also a liberation from his old life of fighting. Like Hightower, Bunch gives up prayer as he gives in to love. He replaces his weekly thirty-mile ride to lead a choir in a countryside church with following Lena and attending to her needs even though Lena has given birth to a baby outside wedlock. Bunch is quite aware that the community does not approve of his new

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lifestyle. From old habit he listens to the communitys voices inside him criticising what he is doing with the difference that he, as a transformed man now, does not need to bother about them. He did not care now, though a week ago it would have been different. Then he would not have stood here, where any man could look at him and perhaps recognize him: Byron Bunch, that weeded another mans laidby crop, without any halvers. The fellow that took care of another mans whore while the other fellow was busy making a thousand dollars. (313) In his new role, Bunch is not only ready to act against the ideology of the hegemonic group, but also to use their racist expectations to save Christmas from death. When Percy Grimm exclaims Has every preacher and old maid in Jefferson taken their pants down to the yellowbellied son of a bitch? (349) in response to Hightowers attempt to save Christmas by providing him with an alibi, it becomes clear that Bunch has set himself apart from the white community, employing his understanding of what Godden calls the workings of the collective sexual imagination, to change society. Godden rightly explains Bunchs approach to social change as a linguistic one: His skill, like Joes (though of a different order of intensity), depends upon a belief that what the voices say can be changed, or, to adapt his own words, that public talking makes truth only while it is suffered to do so (247). Language is not, however, the limit of Bunchs engagement with social change. As his relationship to Hightower and Lena demonstrates, Bunchs social engagement involves concerted action, which changes his image in the collective consciousness. As the arrival of Lena Grove is made the occasion of Hightowers and Bunchs regeneration, it is useful to examine the role of Lena as a marginal figure in the disruption of racist ideology. Lena does not engage directly with racial relations, but it is only when she liberates Bunch from his old way of life that he becomes able to act against the injustice of his society and motivate his friend to do so. And even though Lena makes her way from Alabama to Jefferson and out of it, appreciating peoples kindness, she is no less of a rebel than Bunch. Fowler notes that Lena transgresses boundaries, climbing out of the window of her brothers house to fornicate with Lucas Burch. She is not a seamless urn but a cracked urn, seeping and flowing, obscuring distinctions between self and other (90). Lenas childs birth, in the context of death and the tranquillity of Lenas story and in contrast to the violence of the other two stories, is strongly suggestive of a new order that provides an alternative

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to the prevailing one. Lena is not, however, the only female to join the male figures in their engagement with social change. Christmass grandmother, Mrs. Hines, who has been silenced by her husband for thirty years, takes over when she comes to know that her grandson is still alive and she might do something to save him. The way she and her husband come to Jefferson she to save Christmas and Mr. Hines to take part in his lynching and the way they leave with her in charge is one of the strongest suggestions that Christmass death has divided the white community, at least on the margins, and did not do so in vain. If these are the attempts of the white community members at maintaining or subverting the binaries of their ideology, then there remains the important question about the role of African American characters, who are placed at the margins and beyond the margins of white society, in breaking out of their prisons in segregated areas such as Freedman Town, the black section of Jefferson, and in bringing about social change. Even though the book focuses on the margins of this society, a place that should highlight the presence and the role of African Americans, these people exist there but not as fully individualized people and their role in social change is even more difficult to access. When Christmas finds himself in Freedman Town in what might be described as a fall into the underworld, he responds to the people who inhabit the place as one mass, failing to see them as different individuals: before he knew it he was in Freedman Town, surrounded by the summer smell and the summer voices of invisible negroes. They seemed to enclose him like bodiless voices murmuring talking laughing in a language not his. As from the bottom of a thick black pit he saw himself enclosed by cabinshapes, vague, kerosenelit, so that the street lamps themselves seemed to be further spaced, as if the black life, the black breathing had compounded the substance of breath so that not only voices but moving bodies and light itself must become fluid and accrete . . . . (87 88) These bodiless voices and the language that Christmas regards as foreign, which the residents of Freedman Town use to communicate with one another, make it impossible to examine social change on a linguistic level within this African American community. We are unable to consider whether a similar process of shifting semantic weights is taking place within Freedman Towns verbal exchanges regarding the racial binaries, which are imposed by the white community. It is needless to say that this task is made impossible because we are given only Christmass

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response to this language, which is denied a space in the text, and it is important to add that Christmass response to Freedman Town is shaped by his upbringing according to the values of his foster family.13 Christmass response to Freedman Town is not the only time he responds to African Americans in this way. It actually echoes several other occasions on which he responds to African Americans, not as a mass, but as individuals whose individuality and language he fails to understand. In his first sexual experience, which happens to be with an African American woman, Christmass response to the woman is described, likewise, in terms of smell, and when she talks to him, her language is regarded, not as foreign, but (rather worse) as no language. Christmas stands smelling the woman, smelling the negro all at once; enclosed by the womanshenegro and the haste, driven, having to wait until she spoke: a guiding sound that was no particular word and completely unaware (119). If Faulkners text persistently blocks our access to the complexity of the African American communities in Freedman Town and elsewhere by foregrounding Christmass response to them as monolithic groups and blocks our knowledge of these peoples desire for social change on the linguistic level, then it is important to examine their role in bringing about social change on other levels. Indeed, the more we try to identify the desire of African Americans for social change and their agency in the process, the more we are reminded of our failure. Our frustration at being blocked from examining this role makes us strongly aware of an unbridgeable gap in the text. This very present absence makes it important to ask: why does Faulkner create such a gap in his text, and what is the function of this gap? A comparison between Light in August and Go Down, Moses (1942) is very helpful here. In the latter text, Faulkner gives some of his African American characters the chance, when they encounter their white relatives who do not fully acknowledge them as relatives, to demand recognition and equality. For example, the unnamed mulatta, who turns out to be related to Ike McCaslin, expresses this desire quite confidently when she reminds Ike, who objects to her marriage to Roth Edmonds, about love. Old man, she says, have you lived so long and forgotten so much that you do not remember anything you ever knew or felt or even heard about love? (Go 348). So why does Faulkner prefer to present the role of African Americans in social change as a gap in Light in August? I think that Faulkner chooses to leave a gap in his text because he finds in the gap a more complicated aesthetic expression of this muted role. As in other works of his major writing period, Faulkner prefers to avoid being

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direct on the topic of social change. The aesthetic expression of Light in Augusts engagement with social change lies in, to use Richard Grays words, transforming historical conflict into the processes, the enacted debates of fiction (276). Focusing on the unstable margins of Jefferson, and presenting the role of African Americans as an unbridgeable gap at the heart of the text, Faulkner provides in Light in August an even more eloquent expression of the southern need for social change.

notes
1. Even though Christmas contemplates murdering Joanna before he goes to her bedroom, the fact that he kills her after she has attempted to shoot him complicates his act and makes it less accurate to describe it as murder as it might be regarded also as self-defense. For more discussion on this question see Faulkners Marginal Couple (Duvall 22 23). 2. Aliyya Abdur-Rahman explains that rumor and innuendo were essential to the project of maintaining segregation (186). 3. Eagleton expands that the concept of naturalization rests upon the idea that nature is immutable: It is interesting, incidentally, that the concept of naturalization itself rests upon a particular ideology of Nature, which takes it in the manner of William Wordsworth to be massively immutable and enduring; and it is ironic that this view of Nature should prevail in an historical epoch where the stuff is continually being hacked into human shape, technologically dominated and transformed (59). 4. Christmas approaches Joanna with the intention of raping her in order to subdue her and the sexual encounter that ensues might be described as rape, but this is not directly related to killing Joanna. Furthermore, the way Joanna approaches her rape as a man or as a victimizer rather than a victim undermines the description of the sexual encounter as rape. 5. Gavin Stevens might be regarded as a main speaker of the white communitys ideology because he represents the legal institution. Stevens often plays this role, especially in the last section of Go Down, Moses and in the Snopes trilogy where he presents himself, along with V. K. Ratliff and Charles Mallison, as a defender of Jefferson. 6. Abdur-Rahman maintains that within the context of the South what determined white manhood in the nineteenth century was not simply white skin but access to the vote, access to the bodies of women, the right to defend ones country in war, the right to hold arms or property, the right to acquire capital, and, especially, the right and ability to dominate black people. What determined blackness was susceptibility to violence, a so-called inability to fend off or control primal urges, and an ultimate negation of the aforementioned rights and privileges (178 179). 7. This change can already be seen in the way the community punishes Christmas for the crime he has committed. Critics note that lynching was resorted to by the white community in order to guard the binaries of its ideology

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(Friday 55; Snead Figures 82; Lutz 469). Godden observes that Christmas contributes to change because the word lynch does not cover his death. Semantic weights have changed so much that the word tastes differently on the collective tongue and Grimm commits murder Joe is murdered by the agent of a failing word (234, 242). 8. Judith Halden, who emphasises the role of guilt in the sexual relationship between Christmas and Joanna, explains Joannas use of the word Negro in this context as invoking the name of a people who represent to her not guilt but the dark, savage powers of fertility (214). 9. Barbara Ladd mentions that in 1910, 89 percent of African Americans lived in the South, but by 1930 that proportion had dropped by more than 10 percent (164). 10. I use the word write here as it is used by Owen Robinson in the sense that these people have the most direct effect upon the development of Joes character (170). This, of course, must not suggest that Christmas is completely shaped by others. 11. The fact that these characters convince themselves that they are nonideological can not be generalized to other ideological characters. As Terry Eagleton points out, the never in Louis Althussers claim ideology never says I am ideological may be true most of the time, but it is nonetheless an overstatement (60). 12. Religious institutions, which were sometimes exploited to justify racism, should be distinguished from the religious faith that Hightower eventually discovers. Hightowers new faith is described as that peace in which to sin and be forgiven which is the life of man (Light 366). 13. While this passages problematic presentation might be regarded as describing Christmass racist response, the omniscient narrators presentation of African Americans is quite troubling as well.

works cited
Abdur-Rahman, Aliyyah I. White Disavowal, Black Enfranchisement, and the Homoerotic in William Faulkners Light in August. Faulkner Journal 22.1 2 (2006): 176 192. Davis, Thadious M. Faulkners Negro: Art and the Southern Context. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1983. Douglas, Mary. The Couvade and Menstruation: The Relevance of Tribal Studies. Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology. 2nd ed. 1975. London: Routledge, 1999. 170 179. . Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. 1966. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. Duvall, John N. Faulkners Marginal Couple: Invisible, Outlaw, and Unspeakable Communities. Austin: U of Texas P, 1990. . A Strange Nigger: Faulkner and the Minstrel Performance of Whiteness, Faulkner Journal 22.1 2 (2006): 106 119. Eagleton, Terry. Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso, 1991.

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Faulkner, William. Light in August. 1932. London: Vintage, 2005. . Go Down, Moses. 1942. New York: The Modern Library, 1995. Fowler, Doreen. Faulkner: The Return of the Repressed. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997. Godden, Richard. Call Me Nigger! Race and Speech in Faulkners Light in August. Journal of American Studies 14.2 (1980): 235 248. Gray, Richard. The Life of William Faulkner: a Critical Biography. 1994. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1996. Howe, Irving. William Faulkner: A Critical Study. New York: Random House, 1952. Jehlen, Myra. Class and Character in Faulkners South. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. King, Florence. Southern Ladies and Gentlemen. New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1975. Lackey, Michael. The Ideological Function of the God- Concept in Faulkners Light in August. The Faulkner Journal 21.1 2 (2005/2006): 66 90. Ladd, Barbara. Nationalism and the Color Line in George W. Cable, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1996. Roberts, Diane. Faulkner and Southern Womanhood. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994. Snead, James A. Figures of Division: William Faulkners Major Novels. New York: Gordian P, 1986. . Light in August and the Rhetorics of Racial Division, Faulkner and Race: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1986. Ed. Doreen Fowler and Ann J. Abadie. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1987. 152 169. Williamson, Joel. The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.

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