Soap Opera

I was very disappointed with Light in August. I’ll take the dark and gothic Sanctuary any day over the soap opera that is Light in August. Every character has something hanging over their head. Yes, there is enduring moments where I felt for the characters such as Joe Christmas, who is rejected because of his biracial background and ends up being raised by religious fanatics. Then there is Lena, who literally seems to be the ‘light’ in the novel. Lena’s character surprised me because up until this point, I’ve been presented with mostly antagonist/unredeemable characters by Faulkner. Faulkner took a different route this time by giving me a character…no, actually two characters, Joe Christmas and Lena Groove, whom are truly victims of their circumstances. Faulkner gave a classic southern stereotype— the tragic mulatto, Joe Christmas; this is a man, who from birth is seen, but hidden and he carries the burden of not belonging. He fits neither in the white, nor black community; therefore, he is society‘s orphan because he disrupts the social order. Lena Grove is this saint, and I kept wondering how could such a misfortune happen to a girl so good like Lena? Also, what I found to be pleasant surprise about Lena is that she is not too concerned about what other people think about her pregnancy as did Dewey Dell or Candace did.

I guess what annoyed me about Light in August was the constant miscellaneous drama that one could watch daily on The Young and the Restless. To me, it’s as if Faulkner didn’t give much thought to the development of the plot, in order to create aesthetic drama. So there is no depth in this book for me. As always there was a lot of symbolism and imagery, but no depth. I felt like this was rushed piece of work on Faulkner’s part and he creates these miscellaneous incidents to fill wholes in the story. For example, there was no need for Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden’s affair. Joe is already the most tragic of all characters in the novel or Mrs. Hines believing that Lena is her long lost daughter, when Mrs. Hines knows her daughter is dead. Its tedious incidents that Faulkner makes his characters fall into without much thought. I get what Faulkner was trying to do with the multipliable narrators. However, I always have a problem with trusting a narrator if he or she is either bitter or angry toward the person, they are talking about, which brings up another theme Faulkner is always trying present and that is, stories are bias tales. There is no objectivity in storytelling even if one character like or love the person they are narrating about; there is still a bias point of view that is being put across. That said I’m looking forward to next week Absalom, Absalom!