Identity And Identity In William Faulkner's Light In August

Set in the post-Reconstruction South and focusing on the social interactions between white men and women and black men and women, William Faulkner’s Light in August explores the idea of the outside world’s contribution to a person’s identity and self-perception. As his life progresses, Joe Christmas, a man with supposed black parentage, faces people claiming he is black, which correlates with being subhuman, and implanting ideas that his heritage controls who he is and how he will act. Although Uncle Doc Hines uses his incoherent stories to attest to Joe’s black parentage, Faulkner gives no sufficient evidence that Joe has any black blood in his body; yet, all the characters believe he does. Joe’s encounters with other characters bring him to the conclusion

By focusing on how the people surrounding Christmas pose racial opinions onto him and forcefully shape his perception of himself as animalistic, Faulkner demonstrates how Christmas’s individuality heavily relies on the external thoughts and ideas of the people around him.
Starting in his early childhood, staff and other children at his orphanage ensure Joe knows what they think of him and are quick to alienate him from the group. The first instance of Christmas being accused of black parentage occurs when the other children at his orphanage begin “calling him Nigger” (Faulkner, 127). The children have no grounds to call him this, but are acting upon his differently shaded skin perhaps from Uncle Doc Hines’ influence as the janitor and the only man who knows Christmas’s origins. However, the children plant the seed in the dietitian’s head, and she also resorts to calling Joe black in anger after he hides away in her closet and witnesses her sexual encounter with another staff member. Upon