Light In August Character Analysis

McEachern: A Born Father Figure? As a child, being born into this world without out a father is difficult enough, but losing both of your birth parents and being placed in an orphanage is traumatic for most kids. Without having parental units, it is more likely for a child to have poor social skills and can be unable to express affection. Generically, boys may be more inclined to behave violently with others without any parental attachment. In Light in August, an appropriate model for this type of lifestyle is Joe Christmas. He is a child who lived in an orphanage until being adopted by the McEachern’s, which his adoptive father happened to be excessively abusive towards him. For the way Joe Christmas was raised, he has considerably large issues with feeling alienated, human affection, and brutality because of his so called father, Mr. McEachern. …show more content…
Joe Christmas was never able to express any kind of sympathy or affection to anybody in his life. Mrs. McEachern acknowledged many of the beatings, but would never intervene with Mr. McEachern actions. Mrs. McEachern unconditionally cared for Joe like he was her own with much warmth, but every time Joe shut her out because of what she let happen: “It was not the hard work which he hated, nor the punishment and injustice. He was used to that before he ever saw either of them… It was the woman: that soft kindness which he believed himself doomed to be forever victim of and which he hated worse than he did the hard and ruthless justice of men… ‘She was trying to make me cry. Then she thinks that they would have had me’" (Faulkner 168). Joe preferred the brutal beatings and cruelness of men then the kindness of any women. Joe Christmas belongs to no one as far as he is considered, he only has himself and that is good enough for him. No family should ever be described in this way. This particularly expresses how Joe will never truly fit in where he