The Light of August is the representative work of William Faulkner, a famous American novelist and Nobel Prize winner, and occupies an important position in the author's "Yorknapatafa lineage" novels. "August Light" is based on a racial massacre in the South that occurred when Faulkner was 11 years old. On August 9, 1908, a black man named Leles Burton was murdered by a group of Puritans for killing a white woman; he was sent to prison and used after having his ears cut off and Kao pills dug out. The corpse was paraded with ropes around the necks, and then hung naked from a tree in front of the courthouse. The paranoid Puritans carried out barbaric rituals, and Faulkner created "Light of August" with great indignation at the racial atrocities supported by Puritanism.
The protagonist, Joe Chrismuth, is Faulkner's most tragic character. Before his birth, his father was shot and killed by his maternal grandfather suspected of being of black ancestry. When his mother's life was at stake due to dystocia, his grandfather again carried out "God's will" and refused to save him, resulting in his mother's death in dystocia. Christmus was orphaned from birth. He lost the love of his parents and the warmth of his family forever and was sent to a desolate orphanage. His maternal grandfather, Hans, quietly followed, and became the orphanage's janitor. However, the sinister Hans did not come to take care of his poor grandson, but to further carry out "God's will", so as not to let Krismus, the "devil's crop", escape punishment. Hans spreads that Christmus is a "nigger" among the children, making Chrismus discriminated against since childhood. Chrysmos was adopted when he was 5 years old. Unfortunately, his adoptive father was also an arrogant and stubborn Puritan. When Chrysmus could not recite those Presbyterian teachings, his adoptive father beat him with all his strength and method. If he couldn't memorize it, he continued beating, and he was not allowed to eat until he finally fainted.
Under the dual oppression of Puritanism and racism, Chris Moss's mind was distorted. He suffered from racism, but because of this he became a racist poisoned by racist thoughts. He feared being called "black" by others. ghosts", and also discriminates against "niggers". Therefore, when his lover insisted on sending him to a black school, he killed the white woman who had been with him for three years in a rage. He had the same tragic end, the same lynching, the same genital mutilation, as Leles Burton in 1908. What is meaningful is that Faulkner also carefully arranged another narrative line in the novel: it is about the rural girl Lena fell in love with her lover, was abandoned after she became pregnant, and came to Jefferson Town on foot to find her lover (Chrismuth). The story also takes place in Jefferson Township). Through the description of the ten-day social life in Jefferson Town, the novel reveals the fate of several main characters and their three-generation family history, and reflects the true emotions in the human heart from ancient times to the present. The novel takes the framework of two main lines and takes Jefferson Town as the stage to develop the story. The plot is complex and intertwined, showing various problems about human nature and profound thinking about the history of the South.
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internal structure of "Light of August" has always maintained an inner harmony. Although the story has a double main line, from the experience of the main characters, the tragic fate of Krismus and Lena not only did not obliterate their personalities, but instead made their personalities consistent in two extreme situations. In expressing a kind of "eternal" realm pursued by human beings. The author uses time to hint at this extreme resonance under two clues: on the same Friday, Lena finally reached the destination of her walking, and Krismus was about to end a tormenting love. Lino couldn't bear the endless waiting for Lucas Burch, she chose to walk to express her eternal pursuit of her own personality, while Chris Moss couldn't bear the denial of her own personality by Burton's existence, he chose Use destruction to express your eternal pursuit of self-personality. Eventually they all left Jefferson Town, thus forming a perpetual intention of "always on the road".
Judging from the main clues of the story, although the stories that happened to the two protagonists are different, and their personalities and fates are also different, these differences reflect the same soul essence. From Lena and Chris Moss, we discover the theme that Faulkner has always wanted to express in his series of works. Faulkner shows us two different experiences of two different people, but he brings us the same theme. Two different mainline stories, each supporting and supplementing the other. They appear to be opposites and unrelated. But when you accept or think about one, you can't help noticing the other, so you can think about the story as a whole and get a common answer, not about Lena and Krismus, but about all of humanity .
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If we dig deeper into the novel, then we will find that the protagonist Chris Moss is, to a certain extent, a victim of the same Jesus Christ described by Faulkner. He concentrates all the suffering accumulated by the ancient sins and contradictions of mankind. Faulkner casts Krismus as a human figure into his Yoknapatafa kingdom, and asks him to challenge the ancient sins and contradictions of mankind as an unyielding fighter. Unfortunately, he was no match for the double bondage of race and religion. The non-racial qualities in him have led him to a life of struggle. His most primitive worship of the gods made him miserable in the face of religious shackles.
In Faulkner's view, Krismus's non-racial and primitive worship of gods is a beautiful character of pure human beings. But it all contributed to Chris Moss' tragedy as he was growing up. His tragedy, in turn, is arguably the starkest exposure of the nature of racism and religiousism. It is these ancient sins and contradictions of mankind that make him our general villain. In Christmus, not only the ancient sins and contradictions of human beings are embodied, but also the ancient glory of human beings like Lena, which is to endure. He has been enduring and fighting for his own destiny that has no way out. Faulkner has always believed that human beings have a great ability to endure suffering and the belief that they will eventually overcome suffering. The French writer Camus said: "After Melville, no American writer has written about suffering like Faulkner." The symbolic description of Krismus's death signifies that the suffering he endured is bound to transcend everything. . The sufferers will be redeemed and detached, and the ancient glory of mankind will surpass sin and contradiction. Faulkner used this belief to shape the character of Chris Moss.
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The Light of August is an authentic southern novel, and it is also an important part of Faulkner's "Yorknapatafa lineage". The so-called "Yorknapatafa Lineage" refers to a series of novels written by Faulkner that take place in a county called Yorknapatafa, which is full of southern colors.
The prototype of York Napatafa County is Lafayette County, where his hometown is located. Yorknapatafa is a hallmark of Faulkner's work and is one of the most famous fictional locations in literary history. A recognized master of American literature, Faulkner left behind a fictional, mythical literary territory—located in York Napatafa, northern Mississippi. The county has a radius of 2,400 miles and a population of more than 15,000 people. The center is the town of Jefferson. Faulkner has twice mapped the fictional county, proudly calling himself its "sole owner and owner." Faulkner described this fictional region through many works, which vividly reflected the history of the southern United States after the Civil War, which was full of grand imagination and strong realistic meaning.
"Light of August" is one of the more influential novels in this series. So how should we evaluate the creative value of "Lights of August" as a Yoknapatafa lineage? Some say Faulkner was a hero of the old world, a genius who sang an elegy for the southern aristocratic slave owners: some say He wrote that the manor class was corrupted by the upstarts covered in copper, and really praised the representative of the lower class like Lena. But it seems to me that Faulkner's ultimate purpose in writing these novels is to show his love for his southern homeland. For what great literary works want to express, sometimes we can no longer grasp it in an intellectual way, we can only experience and feel it. This ineffable level can make us feel the meaning of existence. When we see the depth and origin of existence, these things that we cannot see or feel in our daily life will suddenly open to our hearts, as Hegel said. Faulkner's works reach this spiritual realm, which we can all feel in the novel "Lights of August". In this novel, Faulkner's criticism and praise in the text are casual and real, not established on the boundaries of skin color or class. He praised Christmus, not for the pain his skin color brought him, but for his courage to fight against fate. He praised Lena, not because Lena was a humble laborer, but because of the natural simplicity, generosity, kindness, perseverance, and optimism that flashed in her. He also praised the deposed priest Hightower, not because of the glory of his ancestors, but because of the brilliance of humanity that he flashed after delivering Lina's birth... The characters in his pen are not ~ Zhang Zhang who is full of various attributes Manuals, but real people. There is no opposing value system in his creations, but it is centralized - what he criticizes is the human soul, and what he praises is also the human soul. He criticized the South, and he praised the South. Because he loves his homeland, the South, and he loves all mankind, as in Light of August.
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