Faith in Faulkner's Light In August

1642 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: What is the main theme of faulkner's light in august

Faith in Faulkner's Light In August

Religion is a big part of the southern world that Faulkner creates in Light In August. It is also a major theme of the novel. Most characters seem to use “Lord” and “God” very often in their dialogue, which shows that religion is never forgotten by the members of this society. Light in August portrays a type of religious fundamentalism. In this fundamentalism, among the people of the south, there is only one proper way of following and implementing religion in one’s life. Characters are constantly trying to justify killing, hatred, and racism through their faith. The creation of hatred and racism is the result of each character’s belief that theirs are the only genuine beliefs and therefore, it is their responsibility to carry out the work of God in their own personal way and through their own reasoning.

Two characters that are blinded by their own version of living a religious life are Mr. Hines and Mr. McEachern. I will argue that the obsession with their religion and their belief of how it should be followed is an ideology that fails each of these characters in their purpose. Consequently, the more these characters are faced by failure the more they try to embody God and take actions as if they are the Almighty Himself. Ironically, while using religion as a shield these characters fail to see their own sins. These characters see their sins instead, as the most essential and virtuous deeds and the work of God.

From the moment Mr. McEachern picks up Joe Christmas from the foster home he stresses the importance of religion to Joe. While introducing himself, Mr. McEachern explains to Joe, “…I will have you learn soon that the two abominations are sloth and idle thinking, the...

... middle of paper ...

...forced upon them. There are other types of religious extremists, like Doc Hines, who see those who do not share their faith as enemies and believe that they are a curse of God and therefore, should be eliminated through killing.

These ideologies, even though seen in our world today, cannot be the definitions of faith and religion. In fact, the violence created through them defies the very basic beliefs associated with most world religions. Mr. McEachern and Doc Hines are blinded by their faith and their approach to implement religion in their lives and the lives of others is a forceful and violent one. In the end, both characters fail to spread their faith and instead their forceful teachings and extremist beliefs perpetuate more evil than good in the name of God.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. Light in August. New York: Vintage International, 1990.

Show More
Related

  • McMurphy as Christ in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    Finally the actions and feelings of the other characters successfully shows the development of McMurphy as a Christ figure and hero. Clearly smiliarities can be drawn between McMurphy and Jesus' healing. Jesus, made blind men see and mute men speak. McMurphy is the one who prompted the Chief to speak for the first time in years, when he says "Thank-you." (Page 184) and eventually, McMurphy "heals" Chief of his `deafness' and `dumbness'.

    Read More

  • William Faulkner’s Barn Burning: Abner Snopes Character Analysis

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Greed In The Crucible

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    Greed and envy are two of the seven deadly sins in the Christian world that adherents must dispel from their lives. This fact makes it all the more ironic when many Christians during the Salem witch trials display these two offenses in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. One reason explaining the prevalence of sin in a society that thinks of itself as pure is that leaders demonstrate that they care more about actions rather than pureness of thought. For example, clergymen who feature themselves in the play, like Parris and Hale, often measure a person’s connection with the divine through the number of times he or she attends church. In actuality, according to many prominent officials of the Christian Church, that connection can only be achieved

    Read More

  • Flannery O’Connor: Violence as a Christian Literary Tool

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and

    Read More

  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one can deduce that McMurphy is not a Christ-like figure because he is a gambling man; he is a recalcitrant man who has few, if any, extenuating reasons for his rebellion; and he is a superficial man who engages in risqué, ungodly behaviors. His want to gamble in silly childish games reinforces the fact that he is so obsessed with material possession and wanting more in this life. His absurd “reasons” to rebel in the ways that he does, such as eating in front of the workers, makes him not godly. And his want for physical, amoral pleasure from prostitutes and from the wrong people make him a corrupt being, which Christ cannot be. And although many analogies mention Christ in this book, stripping down McMurphy’s actions to their core suggests otherwise that McMurphy is nowhere close to a Christ-like figure.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Religion In Phillis Wheatley And Richard Wright

    1181 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wright grew up in the Jim Crow South where everything about his life was socially and culturally inferior to the white masses. In Bloom’s Modern Critical Views Richard Wright, Qiana J. Whitted wrote about Wright’s life as a kid, shedding light on how his grandmother forced him to partake in religious in order to be saved from “religious execution” (123). It was this type of religious interpretation held by his grandmother, that was a “cultural marker” for Wright, reminding us, “that in his life, as in his writing, Richard Wright wrestled with his faith” (122). This struggle can be seen in Wright’s male character, Big Boy, in Big Boy Leaves Homes. Big Boy and his friends go to swimming creek where they see and are saw by a white woman. With the woman, was a white man who shot at Big Boy and his friends. Big Boy wrestles with Jim over the gun and ends up shooting and killing him. In panic, he runs home to retell the story of the murder he committed and the ones he witnessed. As he tells the story, his father sends for some of the religious members in the community. During this time Big Boy’s mother calls out several times for mercy, “Lawd Gawd in Heaven, have mercy on us all!” (36). The religious community members become a fist around Big Boy and come up with a plan for saving his life. In the midst of this Big Boy experiences an internal conflict with his actions and how they look in the eyes of God.

    Read More

  • Young Goodman Brown Analysis

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    During Goodman Brown’s journey, he recognized Goody Cloyse, his catechism teacher, the preacher, and Deacon Gookin is going to the devil’s meeting. However, after seeing his church members at the devil’s meeting, Goodman says, “My Faith is gone! and There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come devil! for to thee is this world given” (Hawthorne 27). “But, where is Faith?”, asked Goodman Brown (Hawthorne 29). As hope came into his heart, he trembled when he found the pink ribbon of his wife, Faith, in the forest. At that moment, Goodman Brown lost his faith in his family and church members. Goodman becomes unforgiving of others and believes only evil can be created from evil and there is nothing that anyone can do to change it. Here, Hawthorne demonstrates that a naive faith in our family, friends, and church member’s righteousness could lead to distrust. While, “Young Goodman Brown” lives a long life with Faith, he never loses his meanness toward humanity and the evil in the world, “for his dying hour was gloom” (Hawthorne

    Read More

  • Challenge and Conflict of Faith and Intelligence

    640 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hulga, or Joy as her mother calls her, is the protagonist of Good Country People. Being an atheist, having a doctorate in philosophy, and a wooden leg, is the outcast of her family, the dull diamond in both Mrs. Hopewell’s life and mind for she believes that Hulga shall never be up to her expectations. When a Bible salesman by the name of Manley Pointer visits the house, he woos the heart of Hulga to the point that she agrees to meet him the following day to take a walk down in the luscious fields of rural Georgia. Believing that Pointer is a good, Christian man, she strolls with him to a secluded barn to which they start getting comfortable. After many minutes of persuasion, Hulga removes her wooden leg, along with her glasses, to which she cannot she, nor can she walk. Oddly carrying his briefcase, he retrieves a hollowed out Bible containing condoms, cards, and a bottle of whiskey. Then, abruptly, he snatches her aiding wooden leg, and scurries away telling her that he name is not Manley Pointer, he collects prostheses, and that he is an atheist, similar to Hulga/Joy. This moment in the short story is her revelation, and it represents to her not only that people have more faults than those that are ap...

    Read More

  • The Role of a Mother in As I Lay Dying Written by William Faulkner

    1843 Words  | 4 Pages

    Palumbo, Donald. "The Concept of God in Faulkner's "Light in August," "The Sound and the Fury," "As I Lay Dying" and "Absalom, Absalom!"" The South Central Bulletin 39.4 (1979): 142-46. JSTOR. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Christ In The Great Gatsby

    1883 Words  | 4 Pages

    Since the first storytellers, religion has played an important part in developing both character and plot. From Ancient Greece to Egypt to Judaism to Christianity, the basic stories of human origins have stood the test of time. Classic books such as The Great Gatsby, The Stranger, and Lord of the Flies are full of religious parallels and imagery. Conceptually, main characters of each work--Gatsby, The Stranger’s Meursault, and Lord of the Flies’ schoolboys attempt to be Christ-like figures, but whose demise is ironically brought about by their own sins.

    Read More

  • Faulkner The Quintessential Southern Writer

    1185 Words  | 3 Pages

    On September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, a son was born to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Faulkner. This baby, born into a proud, genteel Southern family, would become a mischievous boy, an indifferent student, and drop out of school; yet “his mother’s faith in him was absolutely unshakable. When so many others easily and confidently pronounced her son a failure, she insisted that he was a genius and that the world would come to recognize that fact” (Zane). And she was right. Her son would become one of the most exalted American writers of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two Pulitzers during his lifetime. Her son was William Faulkner.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Faulkner's Philosophy Of Time

    1956 Words  | 4 Pages

    Bergson’s philosophy apparently influenced Faulkner’s notion of time, an admission he has made in an interview with Loic Bouvard. He remarked, “In fact I agree pretty much with Bergson’s theory of the fluidity of time” (Lion in the Garden 70). In the Bergsonian scheme, man experience time as period, a continuous stream, according to which, past, present, and future are not rigid and clear-cut points of difference in time, but they flow in one’s consciousness, persistently impacting one another. From this angle, the past is not strictly past; on the other hand, it is conserved in the present as a living force that influences the way in which one undergoes the present. Furthermore, in different interviews, Faulkner explained that his outlook of time was linked to his aesthetic view:

    Read More

  • Perception of Death in the Play “Everyman"

    1112 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rosenberg J.C. Parallels: The Morality Play Everyman And Selected Tales. UMI DISSERTATION PUBLISHING. 2011. Print.

    Read More

  • Faulkner's Light in August - Style

    830 Words  | 2 Pages

    Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by a ten foot steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but in knowing constant as the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like blacktears.

    Read More

  • Is Religious Fundamentalism Always Totalitarian and Prone to Violence?

    1863 Words  | 4 Pages

    Religious Fundamentalism is not a modern phenomenon, although, it has received a rise in the late twentieth century. It occurs differently in different parts of the world but arises in societies that are deeply troubled or going through a crisis (Heywood, 2012, p. 282). The rise in Religious Fundamentalism can be linked to the secularization thesis, which implies that victory of reason over religion follows modernization. Also, the moral protest of faiths such as Islam and Christianity can be linked to the rise of Religious Fundamentalism, as they protest the influence of corruption and pretence that infiltrate their beliefs from the spread of secularization (Heywood, 2012, p. 283). Religious Fundamentalists have followed a traditional political thought process, yet, have embraced a militant style of activity which often can turn violent (Heywood, 2012, p. 291).

    Read More

More about Faith in Faulkner's Light In August

Open Document