The Main Protagonist in Light in August - Essay Example

Light in August Introduction: The analysis given by Nancy Hadlich in his book describes the background of “Joe Christmas” as why he kept a rude attitude with women. Joe Christmas was an orphan and from his early childhood lived in isolation from the rest of the world. That’s the reason he lacked self confidence and remained in search of an identity. He lacked a teacher in his life that can explain the concepts of religion and identity to him. That’s the reason he went away from human ethics and love. When the feeling of love and kindness went off from his heart, he started to hate women and everything associated with them. Nicholas and Golay when critically analyzing William Fauklner’s novel “the light in august” gives a different point as a reason to why Joe hate women. Joe had an affair with Allen Bobbie, who’s a prostitute but after a short quarrel she ditched him and went away from town. This act leaved deep and life long affects on the way Joe stereotyped women for the rest of his life. Joe Christmas, main protagonist of the novel “the light in august” written by William Faulkner, serves as one of the novel’s most mysterious character. Portrayed as an angry man, he is the one stepping comfortably in neither black nor the white world. As Joe makes his first appearance in the novel, he arouses a strong amount of inquisitiveness on the mill workers, along with contempt for his greater lack of involvement and other appealing qualities. Though Faulkner has provided a number of statements to elucidate Christmas’s attitude, he still remains an isolated, enigmatic figure, indefinable. When working at the mill he is a non entity, an empty slate that is used by biased men who examines Joe according to their own minute level of understanding. Many of them believe that he is a native from an unknown foreign country. Joe Christmas is the central character for the theme projected by Faulkner. By his appearance and complexion he is a white man, but he suspects that he have some black ancestry. He is at times sickened by his blackness, like the time when he beats a prostitute for willing to sleep with a black man, and even loves to live in “black” neighborhood to absorb their norms and way of life. He perceives a mixed opinion, both ashamed and sometime proud of his blackness. He was always eager to inform everyone that he had a black heritage. He himself admits that his seek to come to terms with his racial uniqueness has entirely structured his life. Question 1: Why is Joe Christmas so violent towards women? The perception of feminine sexuality that Joe Christmas has is somehow similar to the characters of “Quentin Compson” and “Horace Benbow”, famous personalities of typical English literature. He is actually against the idea of menstruation, and equals hate the idea of naming a prostitute as an immoral woman. He adores the beauty and attractiveness of a virgin, declaring her a beautiful pot. Yet Christmas never loves the idea of women as a companion, which is why he favors prostitutes. Christmas links bodily blood with his outlook of women. He defines races and masculinity by the odor of their blood, and is responsible and ruined because of the color of his black blood. Faulkner intimately relates to Joe, in particular sexuality, race, and faith, is dyed by the metaphors of blood he belongs. His black blood is the most important element in Christmas's harsh view of women. He has a sick insight of women and her sexual position due to Christmas’s disturbing very first disclosure to sexuality, at the age little age of just five, where he supposed the mating act as aggressive and repulsive. Apart from the fact that he characterized sex as being a disgusted act, he developed the feeling that the male is predestined to provoke fear in his female co-worker. This idea remained in his mind for years and he acted brutally towards women in his own sexual encounters. Question 2: To what extent does his upbringing affect how he treats and views women? Christmas was a mixed race, his mother was White and he never knew his father’s origin. From his early childhood many people treated him as if he was a black alien and an outsider. He lived a life that was lonely and isolated, perpetually searching for his real self. He lived in a southern society which was determined to make him unpleasant, always making him think that he was not one of them and that he was the odd one. From the novel we learn that Christmas skin was fair and that he doesn't know about his father though he suspects him to be black.  He was left on the steps of an orphanage on the Christmas’s Eve. In the orphanage he felt doomed and never got a social life to interact with women. But due to some of the instances he developed a sense of affection for food and in throughout his life came closer to women just because of this element. When food and women were served to him together, Joe would cherish that moment a lot. From the orphanage, he is adopted by a couple named Mr and Mrs. McEarchen who then starts nourishes him with religious teachings. This served as a hard try to turn him towards good. His new parents regularly punished him to enforce their religious principles on Christmas. Their efforts are so oppressive that he develops a hatred for moral values. But at that time he had no choice but to accept whatever was being told to him. He discards the soft advance and gentleness of the woman because it weakens his male characteristic in his reflexive conflict with Mr. McEarchen.  Food with the white woman becomes an additional exploitation of the bad white man, Joe Christmas. To show off his identity in a radical manner he humiliated black women. He loved a prostitute waitress but raped her. Once again the relation of food and sex is pictured in this act.  He is frequently dragged to the primitive sight of his internal quarrel. These situations lead to a wrestle in which Mrs. McEarchen is hit over the head by him, with a chair. Then the waitress leaves him and starts to hate him, after she was informed that he was not a white man and do not deserve loyalty. This tragedy had a great impact on the life of Christmas, and the reason why he stereotyped women. He had spent his life wandering in the streets all the fifteen years of his teenage. After that incident he always told women he passed a sexually intercourse with that he was a “negro”. He was always frightened and uncertain about his identity, merely because of failing with women, but he always spoke the truth. Even knowing that saying he is black is as a good lie as saying he be white. He tries to live with the black women and never gain the passion for love as with white woman he had previously lived. Though he looks for a relationship, but it’s a white woman that he actually wants. He is lost, evicted and separated from society, always thinking that it is his aloneness that he is frustrating to escape from, the reason for the way he interacted with the world. References: Hadlich, Nancy. Joe Christmas: a Critical Analysis of William Faulkner's Protagonist in Light in August. Mu?nchen: GRIN Verlag GmbH, 2008. Internet resource Fargnoli, A N, Michael Golay, Robert W. Hamblin, and A N. Fargnoli. Critical Companion to William Faulkner: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 2008. Print. Read More