Language In Faulkner's Light In August

Through the portrayal of Joe Christmas ' irrevocable separation from his origin, Light in August (1932) depicts a separation that many of Faulkner 's characters experience but which some overcome by virtue of self-composition. Christmas, however, can hardly speak; the dietician’s allegation makes him quiet, and he is soon tormented by McEachern 's goliath of a Bible. McEachern wishes to teach Joe to speak in words not his own, but the child prefers rebellious stupidness. Though he cannot provide words for himself, Christmas however is fated to receive a mark of articulation. He is caught all through the novel between the binaries of blackness and whiteness. The ending of the novel shows Christmas ' mortal failure to mark, to author himself. It is left to his community to blacken his face as it lynches him. The poststructuralist dilemma of language is once again foregrounded in terms of a human catastrophe replete with racial overtones. The condition that language represents what it cannot present; is what draws together incest and

In his texts, Faulkner experiments with various aspects of language such as words, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and even drawings, all of which debilitate the validity of the conventional view that language principally serves for representation and reference, and instead, locate language on the plane of art. Faulkner includes drawings in The Sound and the Fury (the eye, page 275), in As I Lay Dying (Addie’s coffin, page 56), and in Go Down, Moses (the delta, page 343). Faulkner wished to employ characteristics of writing even more. For instance, he wanted to have The Sound and the Fury printed in various coloured inks to indicate time shifts (Selected Letters of William Faulkner 44). Faulkner considers the performative side of language as vital as far as his concept of language as art is