WAI CHEE DIMACK: OK.
So we're starting on our
final novel and I'm
very glad its Faulkner.
There's so many stories to
tell about Faulkner, just
about the composition
of the novel.
So this started out having
a different title.
It started out being
called Dark House.
So you can see that it really is
right on the other side of
the spectrum.
And it's a really an interesting
thing that actually
this novel could be described
as either Dark House
or Light in August. So really,
light and dark obviously are
have the two constitutive
parts of the novel, even
though it's the light that has
been highlighted in the
present title.
In fact, it could just as
well have been dark.
This is what Faulkner says about
the title that we now
have, Light in August. This is
much later when he was talking
about it at the University
of Virginia in 1957.
"In August, in Mississippi
there's a few days somewhere
about the middle of the month
when actually there's a
foretaste of fall.
It's cool, there's a lambence,
a luminous quality to the
light, as though it came not
from today, but from back in
the old classic times.
It might have fauns and satyrs
and the gods from Greece.
And that's all that
the title meant.
It was just to me a pleasant,
evocative title, because it
reminded me of that time of the
luminosity older than our
Christian civilization.
Maybe the connection is with
Lena Grove, who has something
of that pagan quality."
This a great entry point
to the novel.
It's about quality of light
in Mississippi.
So it has this very important,
local dimension to it.
But it also sees itself as
completely looking back to an
extremely long literary
tradition, going back to the
classic times.
And in fact, it predates
Christianity.
So that's very important to
consider this, that while
Christianity is very, very
important in this novel, but
it's very important to remember
that Faulkner
actually also has a reference
point that is older than
Christianity.
So because Faulkner was talking
about fauns and satyrs.
I think that those words are
just words to most of us, so I
just found some illustrations.
This is from the Roman
mosaics, the satyr.
So you see basically it's like
human beings, except, the feet
are the hooves of a goat.
So this is not a very pretty
image of the faun.
I think that in our minds, we
tend to think of the faun as
very delicate and graceful, but
actually it has kind of an
animalistic dimension to it.
And this is probably looking
more like our stereotypical
image of the faun, very
graceful, but nonetheless with
the hooves of a goat.
So in As I Lay Dying, we
talked a lot about the
relation between animals
and humans.
So it's very important to keep
that in mind as well, just in
the reference to the faun.
Faulkner is invoking that whole
uncertain boundary, and
certain in betweenness between
human and animal.
And the satyr actually has
an even long history.
The faun basically is Roman.
Satyr, it goes back to
the fifth century BC.
Basically it's Greek.
And there's a whole genre called
the satyr comedies,
featuring this creature.
It's again, looking for most
part like a human being, but
having the tail of a horse, and
also the ears of a donkey.
Just to see the way in which
the satyr has been
reactivated, and picked
up and reincarnated in
the twentieth century.
Here is someone with the
years of a satyr.
We call them Vulcan's ears, but
looking exactly like the
ears of a satyr.
And here is another image,
basically the ears are the
giveaway of this creature.
Also it's small, not very noble
looking compared to a
human being, or to a god.
So but Faulkner, even though
he's interested in the satyr
and fauns, he's not really
writing about them.
He's mostly interested in Lena
and the fact that she is a
pagan character to him.
So the more on Lena.
"She was never ashamed of that
child whether it had any
father or not, she was simply
going to the conventional laws
at the time...
and find its father.
But as far as she was concerned,
she didn't
especially need any father
for it anymore
than the women that--
on whom Jupiter begot children
were anxious for home and a
father."
So Faulkner seems to be really
interested in women who get
pregnant out of wedlock.
We've seen this in As I Lay
Dying, in Dewey Dell, and the
way in which that is the
constant burden on her mind.
And it seems that now
he has gone to the
other side of the spectrum.
If pregnancy was a constant
burden on Dewey Dell's mind,
here it appears that it
is not a burden at
all on Lena's mind.
And maybe that's why
she's a pagan.
It's that it's completely OK to
be pregnant out of wedlock,
not to have a father, not to
have a wedded father as the
father of your child.
And the reason that is this case
is that Jupiter has had
this long history of having
fathered many children who can
point to Jupiter
as the father--
Jupiter or Zeus--
as the father, but otherwise
not having a human father.
So it's a completely honorable
thing to have a baby when you
don't know who the father is.
And the most famous example of
course is someone called Leda.
So you guys know--
picking two very chaste
illustrations of Leda and the
swan, Tht swan being
Zeus, obviously.
But if you would just go and
look it up, you can find
numerous other illustrations--
some not so chaste--
showing Leda and the swan.
And this is the most
famous example.
Leda was married to someone
else, and Zeus was just
enamored of her.
So he comes to her in
the form of a swan.
And the offspring, one of the
most famous offspring from
that union, was Helen.
So basically the whole of The
Iliad, the whole of The
Odyssey really comes from this
union between Leda and Zeus.
And there would have been no
epic at all if there had not
been this union between
Leda and someone
who's not quite human.
So here's another
illustration.
This one is Greek and this one
is Roman, once again Roman
mosaic, and many modern
incarnations as well.
Yeats also has a poem
about Leda.
So basically someone who goes
down in history as--
even though it's not presented
in this is way, but she's
really going down in history as
the most honorable instance
of pregnancy outside wedlock.
But Faulkner is also not
writing Leda's story.
He's writing Lena's story.
So this is very much a case of
the American Lena's updating
the Greek Leda, even though
maybe she doesn't know the
father, or maybe she's not
sure that she can get the
legitimate wedded husband to
be the father of the child.
She's definitely going
to go and she's
going to get someone.
So, "It was her destiny to have
a husband and children
and she knew it, and so she went
out and attended to it."
Completely matter of fact.
This is the American case,
it's not the old
classic times anymore.
In twentieth century America,
you need to find a guy.
So she's on the road to find
this guy, whom she still
thinks ought to be the
actual father.
So today's lecture is really
about the updating of the old
classic unwed mother.
And this is the structure of
today's lecture, the way that
I've been talking about it,
obviously you know that this
is going to be a comedy
on the part of Lena.
So it's comedy and essentially
sex as comic.
But because this is a road
novel, one of many, it also
has an epic dimension to it.
And another innovation that
Faulkner is bringing to bear
on the novel and that really is
a serious updating of the
classic epic comedy --
is the introduction
of two allegorical
names, Byron and Burden.
I want to go back still, just
linger with the classics for a
moment in defining comedy
in a particular way.
Usually we just in think of
comedy as like a Jane Austen.
That would be comedy, it
has a happy ending.
But actually in the Poetics,
Aristotle defines comedy in a
slightly different way that
actually is closer to the way
that I would like to talk about
comedy in this class.
In the Poetics he says, "The
participants in comedy were
called komoidoi not from their
being revelers, but because
they wander from one
village to another.
So wandering, on the road.
Persons who are inferior, not
however going all the way to
full villainy, but imitating
the ugly of which the
ludicrous is one part.
The ludicrous that is, is the
failing or a piece of ugliness
which causes no pain
or destruction."
So this is a very
counter-intuitive
definition of comedy.
A lot of it is not that nice.
It has to do with villainous
people, but not going all the
way to full villain.
Ugly people, but again, not
going all the way so they're
utterly despicable.
It has a lot to do with people
who are not noble.
And that really is the classic
definition of comedy.
The emphasis really lands on the
happy ending, that on the
fact that they are low born,
that they are low in another
way, that they don't rise to the
tragic height of nobility,
which is the elevation
proper to tragedy.
Comedy is of a much
lower elevation.
So they are sometimes ludicrous,
they are basically
not admirable people.
But one result of not being
completely admirable is that
they actually survive
quite well.
They actually manage
to hang in there.
So they bring no pain or
destruction either to
themselves, or to
other people.
Don't forget, this is the exact
opposite of tragedy.
We have mass destruction at
the end of tragedy --
if you think about the tragedy
of Troy, or the tragedies
based on the story of Troy
-- mass destruction.
Here a comedy suggests that
everyone is going to be able
to survive.
So with that definition in mind,
let's think about the
ways in which Lena is pagan,
especially in relation to her
sexuality, and way that Faulkner
represents this
aspect of the human condition.
This is the story of how
Lena gets pregnant.
"She slept in a leanto room
at the back of house.
It had a window, which she
learned to open and close
again in the dark, without
making noise.
She had lived there eight years
before she opened the
window for the first time.
She had not opened it a dozen
times hardly before she
discovered that she should not
have opened it at all.
She said to herself, that's
just my luck.
Two weeks later, she climbed
again through the window.
It was a little difficult
this time.
If it had been this hard to do
before, I reckon I would not
be doing it now, she thought."
So the entire story what could
have been seen as tragic,
traumatic, devastation in
person's life, one whose
life's been ruined, all that
is told through Lena's
relation to the window, that she
can open it without making
a noise, that's she's done it
a few times, and then she
realized she shouldn't have done
it, and then the final
time it's very hard.
But she wished that it had been
that hard to begin with.
So it's all told through this
completely off focus off
center relation to
the main event.
And it doesn't seem especially
bad, really, even though it's
a matter of inconvenience.
And that really is what the
pregnancy is to Lena.
It is a matter of
inconvenience.
It is a nuisance, that it is not
so easy for her to get out
the window at this time.
And just to remind us that
Faulkner doesn't always write
about sexuality in this way,
let's just go back to a
character who is completely
non-pagan.
And there's no more striking
example than Quentin in The
Sound and the Fury.
So this is what he thinks
about women's sexuality.
"Delicate equilibrium of
periodic filth between two
moons balanced.
Moons he said full and
yellow as harvest
moons her hips thighs...
Liquid putrefaction like drowned
things floating like
pale rubber, flabbily filled
getting in odor of honeysuckle
all mixed up."
So for Quentin and indeed for
most non-pagan characters,
there's a good part of the world
that is repugnant, that
is just really repulsive.
And it turns out that women's
sexuality is part of that very
repugnant world.
So it's not great to live
in a world like that.
And that's really why Quentin
does what he does.
For someone like Lena who is
pagan, much of the world, in
fact probably all the world
is not repugnant.
It's inconvenient, sometimes
it's a little ugly, it's a
little messy, but it's
not repugnant.
And that's why she
is what she is.
So this is one way we can
think about Lena.
And I should tell you that she's
not the only character.
So this novel is actually not
that comic, but her share of
the novel is comic
in that way.
But even though Aristotle
defines comedy as basically
the journey that is undertaken
by ignoble persons, the more
recognizable model obviously
is the epic journey.
So any time we think of someone
traveling on the road,
we think of the epic genre.
And that is very much in play.
We've seen it in play elsewhere
in Faulkner.
It's very much in play
here as well.
And this actually a kind
of not so funny--
It's interesting to see what
the tone of this is, of the
description of Lena
being on the road.
"Though the mules plod in
a steady and unflagging
hypnosis, the vehicle does
not seem to progress...
like a shabby bead upon the
mile red string of road.
So much so is this that in the
watching of it the eyes loses
it as sight and sense drowsily
merge and blend, like the rode
itself, with all the peaceful
and monotonous changes between
darkness and day, like already
measured thread being rewound
onto a spool.
So that at last, as though
out of some trivial and
unimportant region beyond even
distance, the sound of it
seems to come slow and terrific
and without meaning,
as though it were a ghost
traveling a half mile ahead of
its own shape."
Great description.
And it's on a different
register.
We can see that it's really on
a different tonal register
from Lena having trouble
climbing out the window.
And I would say that there's a
complicated relation between
the epic genre and the comic
genre in this novel.
On the whole, what the epic
genre brings to this novel is
the sense of a journey that
somebody has to go on.
It's not even especially
pleasurable.
It just stretches on.
Yesterday listening more in
terms of paradigms that we've
been using.
Tomorrow is going to be exactly
like today, and going
to be exactly like yesterday.
It's the repetition of the same
that defines this kind of
epic journey.
So it is peaceful
and monotonous.
And the image that Faulkner
uses is that it's like an
already measured thread being
rewound onto a spool.
There's absolutely nothing
new under the sun.
It is just an old story being
told over and over again, and
the complete exclusion of
anything that is dramatic from
this sense of the journey.
So in many ways it's very hard
to write a novel based on the
fact that it's completely
monotonous.
And that's part the challenge.
Although I promise you, the rest
of the novel actually is
anything but monotonous.
But Lena's part of it actually
aspires to be monotonous in a
good sense.
In a sense that there's
really--
It's good.
There's no dramatic
development.
There's no catastrophe.
That's really what Faulkner has
at the back of his head,
is that catastrophe is
what defines tragedy.
Non-catastrophe is what
defines comedy.
So just to give you a sense of
the way in which this epic
journey is being incarnated and
reincarnated in American
literature.
Two other very famous novels,
Jack Kerouac's On the Road,
and more recently this
apocalyptic instance of that,
Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
Faulkner's On the
Road is a little
different from those two.
So today we'll think all the
ingredients that go into his
making of his road novel.
It has to do with kindness of
strangers, it has to do
something like switchability; if
the journey is going to be
pretty monotonous for
Lena, there's
got to be some variation.
It has to alternate with
something else.
So it turns out that actually
even though the protagonist
herself too is peaceful for
this story to be very
dramatic, there will be other
people, the supporting cast
actually, who supplies
the drama.
So there's kind of a
switchability between when the
action or where the drama
is going to come from.
As far as Lena's concerned, the
drama's going to come from
the supporting cast, rather
than from Lena herself.
And this further switchability
in terms of the relation
between the weighty
and the mundane.
And then I'll talk about
gerunds as well.
So there's the outline
of what is to come.
But let's just stay with the
kindness of strangers for a
little bit.
Lena has come quite far.
And the reason that the journey
is so peaceful and
monotonous is that there's an
endless supply of people who
would do things for her, who
will be the supplies of
hospitality to keep
Lena going.
And that's who is very Greek.
We know that hospitality is
one of the key virtues in
Greek culture.
When a stranger comes, you're
supposed to feed them, shelter
them, give them presents
when they go away.
That is the understanding, the
basic mode of exchange between
human beings, is that you're
good to people you are seeing
for the first time, and that
you never see again.
So the quality, there's
something of that in a way
that Lena is being treated.
"The evocation of far is the
peaceful corridor paved with
unflagging and tranquil faith
and peopled with kind and
nameless faces and voices.
Lucas Burch.
I don't know.
I don't know of anybody by
that name around here.
This road?
It goes to Pocahontas.
He might be there.
It's possible.
Here's a wagon that's going
a piece of the way.
It will take you that far."
So these people are completely
faceless and nameless.
They really are complete
strangers.
They are not meant to be
remembered or to be
encountered again, even though
Faulkner sometimes actually
picks up some of them
in his other novels.
But they're meant to recede into
the background as part of
that peaceful and monotonous
corridor, which it is
completely safe for
Lena to travel.
So it's the sense of guaranteed
safety due to the
guaranteed hospitality
of strangers.
But we know that the kindness of
strangers has got to take a
dramatic turn for there to be
a good story to the novel.
So we're actually seeing
it very soon.
And it comes about
through Lena's
interaction with a couple.
She's been taken in
by this couple.
And it turns out that the
arrival of Lena creates a
major upheaval in the life
of this married couple.
So all of the sudden, Lena
recedes into the background.
So we can add to switchability,
the
switchability between foreground
and background.
Lena recedes into the background
as the supporting
cast comes to the foreground.
so this is the exchange
between the Armstids.
"He cannot tell from
her voice if she's
watching him or not now.
He towels himself with
a split floursack.
Maybe she will.
If it's running away from her
he's after, I reckon he's
going to find out he made a bad
mistake when he stopped
before he put the Mississippi
River between them.
And now he knows that she is
watching him, the gray woman
not plump and not thin, manhard,
workhard, in a
serviceable gray garment worn
savage and brusque, her hands
on her hips, her face like those
of generals who have
been defeated in battle.
You men, she says.
What do you want
to do about it?
Turn her out?
Let her sleep in
the barn maybe?
You men, she says.
You durn men."
So this is all we're
going to--
I mean, we'll get one more,
a little bit more of this.
But this is really as far as
Faulkner is concerned, this is
completely adequate
freestanding
snapshot of the marriage.
And I would say that it is as
interesting as the marriage
between Cora and her husband,
Tull, except that it is at the
moment a tension between
the two.
So we know that what kind of
people these are, they are the
poor white, more people who
can't afford a towel and use a
split floursack for a towel.
And the way that they actually
know each other very well.
So Armstid doesn't have to look
usually, to see if she's
watching him or not.
It really says a lot about what
kind of a relationship it
is, that you can just tell by
the tone of voice whether or
not the person's
looking at you.
So that for me is a measure of
how good the marriage is, that
you know your companion
that well.
Just a tone of voice will be
able to tell you exactly the
posture, the physical posture
of this person.
So initially we can't really
tell, but then once he said
something, once he said, hey
this guy is not going to be
able to escape from Lena, once
he said that then she knew
instantly that she's
looking at him.
And we know what she looks like,
sort of a more stern
version, I think, of Addie, but
very much belonging to the
same socioeconomic group, in
a gray garment, working
hard all her life.
But also not just workhard and
all these interesting coined
adjectives, coined
by Faulkner.
Manhard--
I don't exactly know
what that means.
Manhard.
Maybe she is completely
resistant to
the charms of men.
Maybe that's one definition of
what it means to be manhard.
Certainly, she's worked
hard all her life.
And maybe the two adjectives
are related in that way.
There's a way in which if you
work so hard all your life
you're kind of immune to
the charms of other
people, men and women.
So she is immune to the charms
of her husband, and her face
is like the face of
generals who've
been defeated in battle.
It is a weird reference.
The Civil War is really not
important in this--
Well no actually.
The Civil War is very, very
important to another
character, but it's not
important to Lena.
The Civil War is front and
center for another character,
but it oddly intrudes into this
moment when it really is
not the reference point.
But the entire history of the
South is indexed in this
reference of Mrs. Armstid's
face looking
like the face of generals.
So in many ways, she's more like
a man than like a woman.
I know there's actually
that --
when I came to this sections
last week and I enjoyed them
very much, some of you mentioned
that Nicole is
financially more like a man
and so is Rosemary.
Rosemary is financially
more like a man.
So Fitzgerald has also thought
about the ways in which there
could be a cross-gender dynamics
in people who are
otherwise completely feminine.
And here she doesn't look
especially feminine, and the
cross-gender dynamics are much,
much more powerful here.
So she's like a general who's
been defeated in battle.
So maybe she's been defeated
in life, just because it's
been such a hard life, or just
that it didn't go exactly the
way she wanted.
We don't know the contents of
that phrase, that why her face
is like the face of generals
who have been defeated.
We also don't know, but that's
the least of it.
We don't know why she's suddenly
saying what she's
saying to her husband.
"You durn men."
Armstid's really not
contemplating having
an affair with Lena.
So the durn men is not really a
complaint against her husband.
It is a grievance that is
probably directed against the
entire half of the human
population, men, that this is
what men would do to women,
and her husband, being an
instance of that.
Although, obviously there are
many other episodes in the
marriage that might be in
the back of her mind.
But in any case, this completely
out of the blue,
out of context, outburst from
Mrs. Armstid suggests that
this is both a very good
marriage, but also a
complicated marriages as all
marriages would have to that
have lasted for a long time.
So these two people know
each other very well.
And he seems to know, he knows
better than we do exactly what
is going on in her mind when
she says, "You durn men."
And then there's a further
development to this episode.
Now we're getting dramatic
action from Mrs. Armstid.
"What are you fixing to do with
your eggmoney this time
of night, he says.
I reckon it's mine to
do with what I like.
She stoops into a lamp, her
face hushed, bitter.
God knows it was me
who sweated over
them and nursed them.
You never lifted no hand.
Sho, he says.
I reckon it ain't any human in
this country is going to
dispute them hens with you,
lessen it's the possum and the
snakes, that rooster bank,
neither, he says.
Because, stooping suddenly,
she jerks off one shoe the
strikes the china bank a
single shattering blow.
From the bed, reclining, Armstid
watches her gather the
remaining coins from among the
china fragments and drop them
with the others into the sack
and knot it and reknot it
three or four times with
savage finality."
This is one of the most
satisfying representations of
almsgiving, or people being
charitable, and looking
completely not charitable
when they're doing it.
So this is the only way this
woman will allow herself to be
charitable is by looking as
harsh and bitter as she could.
So before that, answer
her thought.
Well maybe she's just in kind
of a jealous mood and she's
not going to allow Lena
to stay in the house.
But it turns out that it's
quite the opposite.
And it probably was a kind of
a complex combination of
recognizing that, yes this
is a young woman, very
attractive, that she's not
that young woman, very
attractive.
But recognizing maybe in some
sense that this woman is
embodying a long nursed
grievance that she has against
men in general.
Whatever is the psychology,
she is in solidarity with
Lena, without ever wanting to
betray that solidarity.
So it is that complicated kind
of behavior that you want to
do something for that person,
but you never want to give
yourself away as doing
something.
So it really is the most
interesting and dramatic and
psychologically and behaviorally
complicated kind
of kindness of strangers, is
that it's not, definitely not,
the traditional kind
of almsgiving.
So in terms of the narrative
dynamics, we can say that the
Armstids have completely taken
over the narrative.
There's a complete switch
between Lena, the supposed
protagonist, and the two of
them being the supporting
cast. It turns out that
the supporting cast --
that Faulkner probably spends
more time thinking about the
supporting cast, than he
does thinking about the
protagonist.
And that is a really interesting
way to define the
protagonist, is that maybe a
protagonist is someone you can
actually afford not to spend a
lot of time thinking about.
And that it is really the
supporting cast that you have
to give your energy to.
It's a very interesting
definition of reversibility,
of the distribution of space,
distribution of attention
within the story.
And we're seeing many
instances of this.
So because we've just done with
Fitzgerald, just wanted
to remind you of a very
obvious instance of
switchability in Tender Is the
Night, in the description of
Nicole, that her brown back is
hanging from the pearls.
The human body is hanging from
the appendage, a completely
switched, reversed degree of
importance between the person
who's supposedly the protagonist
and that what is
supposed to be just
an appendage.
And of course that switchability
is played out
not only in terms of that one
particular detail, but also in
terms of the entire narrative
of Tender Is the Night.
It turns out that Dick Diver
is completely upstaged by
Nicole as she becomes really the
main actor in the novel.
That is has becomes her story,
that she gets to dictate the
outcome of that story.
And he becomes her appendage,
dispensable appendage at the
end of the novel
So we're seeing this
in Faulkner.
Basically on a very large macro
scale, in terms of the
entire narrative structure
of Tender Is the Night.
In Faulkner, it is
much more local.
It is just this one moment
that there's this switch
relation between protagonist
and supporting cast. But it
also plays out on different
registers in Light in August.
So we'll look at one other
also local instance of
switchability.
If the Armstids represent the
dramatic arm of the novel,
where Faulkner can give us
high, human psychological
drama, when it comes to Lena,
what he gives us is kind of
very small upheavals on what is
basically a level platform.
But even on that very level
platform, they have mild
upheavals, and it has to do with
the switchability between
the weighty and the mundane.
"So she seems to muse upon the
mounting road while the
slowspitting and squatting men
watch her covertly, believing
that she is thinking about the
man and the approaching
crisis, when in reality she is
waging a mild battle with the
providential caution of the old
earth of and with and by
which she lives.
This time she conquers.
She rises and walking a little
awkwardly, a little carefully,
she traverses the ranked battery
of maneyes and enters
the store, the clerk
following.
I'm a-going to do it, she
thinks, even while ordering
the cheese and crackers.
"I'm a-going to do
it, saying aloud.
And a box of sardines.
She calls them sour-deens.
And a nickle box."
So this is the essence of the
drama in the to be or not to
be, or in this case to
do or not to do.
The to do or not to do in Lena's
consciousness revolves
around a box of sardines.
And that is completely
OK for Faulkner.
It qualifies her to be the
protagonist of his novel.
So we really have to give some
thought to what it is that
entitles a person to be the
protagonist of a novel.
We know that in Greek tragedy,
a person has to be noble and
to have a very drastic downfall
in order to qualify
to be the hero of a tragedy.
In the modern comic novel,
nothing like that.
Just a very, very minor
upheaval is OK.
So I think that it is because
of that very level platform,
because of that basic, very
reliable continuum that is
backed up, supported, by the
kindness of strangers, it's
because of that continuum that
we get a really interesting
linguistic practice, and a
kind of a stylistic tick
almost in this particular
novel.
We've seen a little bit of that
in the other novels, but
this novel it's really
pronounced.
It has to do with the use of
gerunds, especially turning
verbs into nouns.
We've seen a little bit of that
earlier in the passage,
but here it becomes
in the foreground.
"That far within my hearing
before my seeing...
I will be riding within the
hearing of Lucas Burch before
his seeing.
He will hear the wagon,
but he won't know.
So there will be one within his
hearing before his seeing.
And then he will see me and
he will be excited.
And so there will be two within
his seeing before his
remembering."
Highly stylized.
Basically, there's no way we can
not notice the fact that
the verbs are being used as
nouns in this instance.
So the way that we can maybe try
to make sense of this very
self conscious practice on
Faulkner's part, is by
noticing how different an image
of Lucas Burch we're
getting from Lena.
How different from the image
that we've getting just a
moment ago.
No, actually just a moment
later from Armstid.
Armstid knows exactly
what Lucas is doing.
He's running away from her.
He's just really unlucky that he
hasn't put the Mississippi
River in between himself
and this woman.
So Armstid has a completely
accurate diagnosis and
portrait of what kind of
a man Lucas Burch is.
Lena has a completely
unrealistic, out of touch with
reality portrait of Lucas.
She things that he'll be very
glad to see her and he'll be
excited that in fact it's
not just one person
who's coming, but two.
And so in many ways what
Faulkner is giving us in this
very stylized, linguistic
practice, is to create a kind
of linguistic cocoon around
Lena, that she is insulated by
this unidiomatic use of
English, just as she's
insulated by an interpretation
of reality that really has
very little to do with the
reality which is the truth
about Lucas Burch.
It is very much a kind of
linguistic shelter, in which
she can afford to keep on
thinking in this way about the
man who keeps running
away from her.
And this is why she can afford
and why can she be continued
to be completely unworried,
unanxious about her pregnancy.
This is how she can do avoid,
she can prevent that from
becoming a burden on her.
So we can think of this as one
element, Faulkner is very
artistic, intervening to make
certain things possible for
one character that would not
be possible for other
characters.
And this particular
intervention, the use of
gerunds, is one stylistic device
to make sure that Lena
is preserved in a state of
constant well-being.
But he's also clear-eyed enough
to know that she really
is completely dead wrong
about Lucas Burch.
Sorry.
Fast forwarding to a
much later moment.
But this is just to bring
Faulkner into a discussion
that we've been having all
through the semester which is
about types, where certain
people, characters, can be
classified, they belong to
broader groups, groups that
have labels.
So it turns out that he's also
quite conscious of the fact
that Lucas Burch actually is not
so much an individual as a
type, a type of man.
And this is his commentary--
This is actually Hightower's
commentary, but it's as good
as Faulkner's--
commentary on the fate
of Lena Grove.
"For the Lena Groves,
there are always
two men in the world.
And the number is legion.
Lucas Burches and Byron
Bunches." There's all of them
are suddenly appearing
in the plural.
So Lena Grove is a type.
They have the Lena Groves
of the world.
And then there's the Lucas
Burches and Byron Bunches.
And this is really what saves
Lena, is that she actually is
one of the Lena Groves.
And her fate is to be unlucky
in one sense, in that she's
stuck with a man like
Lucas Burch.
But she's lucky in a sense
that you can just know.
It's almost kind of a
statistical point, that to
every Lucas Burch, there will be
a Byron Bunch who will take
care of her.
So she was saved in this way
that there always will be the
pairing of two kinds
of men in her life.
So here is the allegory thick
and fast, definitely very
heavy handed and meant
to be noticed.
Byron, Lord Byron, the
stereotypical romantic poet.
And with the added little
joke, I think, that he
actually died in Missolonghi,
Italy.
So it has some reference,
some affinity to
Mississippi, as well.
And I'm sure that it is not
beyond Faulkner to think that
that's a nice connection.
So here's Byron being the
namesake for Byron Bunch.
And sure enough, he lives
up to his namesake, the
romanticism of his namesake.
"Then Byron fell in love.
He fell in love contrary to
all the tradition of his
austere and jealous country
raising, which demands in the
object physical inviolability.
It happens on a Saturday
afternoon while he's
alone at the mill.
Two miles away the house is
still burning, the yellow
smoke standing straight as a
monument on the horizon.
They saw it before noon, when
the smoke first rose above the
trees, before the whistle blew
and the others departed.
I reckon Byron'll quit
too today, they said.
With a free fire to watch."
This switchability is in
high gear in here.
It starts out with Byron falling
in love, but that
romantic side of this story
doesn't even get to control
the entire paragraph.
Basically it just gets
two sentences.
And then the rest of the
paragraph is taken over by
something that has nothing
to do with romantic love.
And all of a sudden we realize
that yes, Byron is falling in
love at the same time
as a very--
that's dramatic enough
in his life.
But this drama in Byron's life
is taking part with a drama
that's going to overtake the
entire town, which is the
burning of a house.
And it says something --
and we're also getting another
glimpse of what kind of people
are living in this town in
the reference to the
free fire to watch.
This is not the strangers who
are kind to other strangers.
It's a very different portrait
of the local community.
So it turns out that Byron is
not the only person who has an
allegorical name, but a young
character who does as well.
"It's a big fire, another
said, what can it be?
I don't remember anything coming
out that way big enough
to make all that smoke except
the Burden house.
Maybe that's what it
is, another said.
"My pappy says he can remember
how 50 years ago folks said it
ought to burned, and with a
little human fat meant to
start it good.
Maybe your pappy slipped it out
there and set it afire, a
third said.
They laughed."
So this is the others
allegorical name, that Byron's
always going to be paired with
someone whose name is Burden.
And Burden is not as--
There's no Byron
to clue us in.
There's actually a very famous
poem that will suggest to us
the origins of that name,
Kipling's poem, "White Man's
Burden." "Take up the white
man's burden / and reap his
old reward: / The blame of those
ye better, / the hate of
those ye guard."
I think we have a completely
misguided, wrongheaded notion
actually of Kipling's
White Man's Burden.
It's not really about how great
it is to take up the
white man's burden, but how
awful it is and that you incur
the hatred of lots of people.
So this is one of the
allegorical names, how they
function in Light in August
and how Faulkner's really
updating the old classic story,
is that it really is
the story about the fate of
someone called Byron and the
fate of someone called Burden.
And obviously there are other
characters who are invoked
through those two characters,
but they're both on fire.
Byron is on fire because
he's falling in love.
Joanna Burden actually is on
fire in that she's being
burned alive.
She's dead by that point.
But she's on fire, her
body's on fire.
So that is also what contributes
to the Light in August
and that's why the other
alternative title, Dark
House, is just as appropriate.
