Essay about Racial Theme in Faulkner’s Light in August

Loyalty should be considered a quality that is supposed to keep family ties together and use the shield of bravery to protect it. It is proven that devotion in families of today, are lost and bravery shows no character in a person. It is a personality that each individual has in them only to be used in the most courteous way and should not be used selfishly. Loyalty cannot be purchased and must be earned. If it used in the wrong way, it can climax to a disaster.

This shows they are treated like animals and not as equals. TJ is considered disposable by the white men as they do not care what happens to him. Also the fact that there was no legal intervention displays how racist the community really was towards black people. In my opinion, I think Mildred Taylor included this in the novel to show that no one stood up to it even though it was unjust and unfair.

The New South: an era of change, a time of transition away from the destruction of the Civil War and chaos of Reconstruction. However, while the institution of slavery and a cotton-based economy faded away into the past, feelings of intolerance and inequality resided in the hearts and minds of Southerners, shaping a new society that closely mirrored the old. Blacks and other minorities, such as women, remained in an underclass with strict social and economic rules as the South expanded outside it agrarian roots. William Faulkner captures the preconceived sentiments keeping the Civil War relevant in the South in his novel Light in August. He chronicles the stories of the outcasts Lena Grove and Joe Christmas, both people who break social

She remembers small details like how her friend only had black dolls to play with. She didn’t realize this at the time because she was so young, but she thinks that the reason why her friend’s parents weren’t too fond of her wasn’t necessarily because she was white, but because they were probably afraid of what would happen to them for associating with a white person, or if something bad had happened to her while under her supervision. Like in Mosaic, Ida B Wells discusses some of the reasons why black people were lynched. A lot of those reasons included being falsely accused of committing acts against a white person. Even if the black person did nothing and just happened to be there at the scene, they were almost always punished for it. For example, when white landowner’s wives would get pregnant and the baby ended up being of mixed race, even if it was never the black worker’s fault, they were blamed for it. This is why a lot of the times many African Americans fled from where they worked and were never to be seen again. “The daily papers last year reported a farmer’s wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child. When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took the mule from the plow and fled… In Natchez, Mississippi, Mrs. Marshall,... [gave birth to a child who was] unmistakably dark. All were alarmed, and ‘rush of blood, strangulation’ were the conjectures, but the doctor, when asked the cause, grimly told them it was

The most important theme in this book was the trials and tribulations of racism because it was woven in every part of the plot, it contributed to the conflict and resolutions, and gave the story a connection to current events, helping the reader’s comprehension.

We saw prejudice and discrimination throughout the book. For example, when Lafayette’s was charged with a crime due to hi, been associated with who did it. When LaJoe lost her benefits from the state due to her on and off husband using her home address and when collecting unemployment benefits which LaJoe did not claim as income coming into the home. In both instances, the Rivers were treated as if they were liars and criminals. Because of Lafayette being from the inner city, there was this predetermine thought about any youth that lived in the inner city from the court system. LaJoe was treated with disrespect by the welfare office because of the prejudgment they had formed about people that lived in the inner city. Due to the location in which they stayed, the importance of healthy living condition was not a priority to the city. They were forced to live in the vicinity of garbage, broken sewer systems, dead animals, etc. Also, the children were forced to either stay in their apartments or play on the railroad tracks because the city had only a few areas for them to play. These areas had become run down and it was unsafe for kids to play in. It is unsure why the was such neglect for those areas of the inner city, but one could only think that it had to do with how this race has been treated for years.

Rankine’s extensive use of second person point-of-view establishes both directness and vagueness. Throughout the book, the reader experiences racism directly and indirectly, and acts as the author’s medium for expressing ideas and emotions. In one instance, we’re presumably placed in the shoes of a 12-year old Rankine, who allows a fellow student to cheat off of her exam, “You assume she thinks she is thanking you for letting her cheat and feels better cheating from an almost white person” (19). The occurrence is described passingly, as if it was one of many microaggressions young Rankine has experienced in the past. These seemingly normal happenings contrast with the book’s thought-provoking images; a street sign that reads “Jim Crow Road” is pictured after the aforementioned incident (21). Rankine utilizes these contrasts to force the reader to think deeply about

developing a mind and will of his own. He is no longer unperceptively loyal to his father.

actions to show that no one will own or control him. He has no regard

The birth of the modernist movement in American literature was the result of the post-World War I social breakdown. Writers adopted a disjointed fragmented style of writing that rebelled against traditional literature. One such writer is William Faulkner, whose individual style is characterized by his use of “stream of consciousness” and writing from multiple points of view.

Faulkner’s works consisted of many dark touchy topics such as war, racism, mental illness and suicide in all of books, short stories, William Faulkner wrote about almost every part of life, from something that could be absurd at his time, to something real like racism in the American South. Throughout his life, Faulkner was kind of a rebel, notorious for his confidence, drinking, and he would often make up stories about himself. Faulkner wrote from experience and as a person who lived in the south during times of racism, he wrote about a lot of things in the south. To be exact his specific genre or style in which he wrote in is what some call “southern gothic”. Southern gothic is a unique style of writing and only expressed by very few authors. These stories usually take place only in the south and have darkness to them. His stories would use irony to examine the values of the American south. Instead of solely trying to add suspense with the style it is also used to explore social issues and cultural character of the south. Which leads me to one of Faulkner’s first important novels “Sartoris”. In Sartoris Faulkner focuses on a family during the world war era in the south. In the book the Sartoris family is one of the more important families in Yoknapatawpha County where the book is set. The Old Colonel, John Sartoris, represents an old and dying out order dating back to the mid 1900’s. His world revolves around his plantation home, his slaves and his

It is easy to understand why Faulkner included Black characters in his novels, however, the question of how he portrays them still remains. In 1929, inspired by the unavoidable racial intermingling occurring in the south at this time, Faulkner produced one of his greatest works, The Sound and The Fury. In the fourth

One of the main realities of human existence is the constant, unceasing passage of time. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner explores this reality of time in many new and unexpected ways as he tells the tragic tail of the Compson family. The Compsons are an old Southern aristocratic family to whom time has not been kind. Years of degeneration mainly stemming from slavery have brought them to the brink of destruction. Most of the story focuses on the Compson children who are undergoing the worst of the social and moral decay. Each of the four children perceives time in a much different way but by far the strangest and most bizarre attitude toward time that is given in the text is held by

The story of "Barn Burning" was "first published in the June of 1939 in the Harper's Magazine and later awarded the O. Henry Memorial Award for the best short story of the year." The author, William Faulkner, "was one of America's most innovative novelists". The way he describes the smells, sites and sounds of the rural late 1800's make you feel as if you are there with the characters in this story. Through the use of symbolism, Faulkner tells the story about a relationship of a father and son. Fire was the most vital symbol used and describes the way, Abner, the main character in the story faces all of his challenges. He lived his life like a flaming inferno destroying

His novel explores the healing process as well as the digression and push back of those in the South unable to compromise with the loss and renewal of life they had to make. The complex and alternating speakers and stories are laced together disruptive families that carry ties back to one another. The problems of intermarriages between blacks and whites, incest, the individuality being stripped from what people had known reaches peoples limits. Faulkner plays with these important moments, memories, ages and thoughts that prove his beliefs of this broken image of America.