Breaking Out of the Ring. Blackness in William Faulkner's Light in August

Abstract

This article assesses the ways in which William Faulkner’s 1932 novel, Light in August, uses concepts of Blackness and race to reflect one facet of the African American experience in the U.S. South. I take my title from Joe Christmas’ musing, that “I have never got outside of that circle, I have never broken out of the ring of what I have already done and cannot ever undo.” (Light in August 252)

Christmas, one of Faulkner’s many racialised figures, cannot be either Black and/or white according to the societal need for categorisation – tellingly, Faulkner leaves the decision of Joe’s race to the reader, if a decision ought to be made at all. Does Joe feel more at home as white, or Black? When attempting to escape from either race, Christmas’ inherently- and enduringly-racialised body creates questions of rupture and social pressure which can only end in his death.

Throughout Light in August, Joe tests the limits of race and sexuality, goading the townspeople to generate responses which primarily end in violence. Perhaps, if he cannot define his own race through “white thinking,” he can provoke others to 'choose' his race for him. (Light in August 166)

Faulkner exposes the fact that to break out of "the ring" of race is impossible. This argument acutely addresses racial issues and the polarisation of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, and the South as a whole.