Light In August Isolation

In Light in August, William Faulkner explores many ideas that revolve around man’s relationship with his community, particularly his isolation from it. These ideas can best be expressed by analyzing the characteristics of Lena Grove, Reverend Gail Hightower, and Joe Christmas. Each of these characters is in some way, shape, or form isolated from his or her community, and each character’s relationship with his or her community can be derived from their relationship with the past. Faulkner uses a narrative style that varies by each character in an attempt to highlight the correlation between man’s relationship with his past and man’s relationship with his community. This direct correlation carries with it the implication that as one either immerses …show more content…
Hightower lives in his past and as a result remains isolated from his community. He moved to Jefferson to be a reverend, but after his wife’s suspicious weekend trips to Memphis and ultimate suicide, he was relieved of his duties. He chose to remain in Jefferson, but was disconnected from his community because of the negative gossip and rumours that surrounded him. The way he obsesses over the events of his past, specifically his grandfather’s Confederate cavalry unit, serves to portray the prevalence of the past in everyday life. Hightower is haunted by the ghost of his grandfather and as a result marries a woman whom he does not love. In Chapter Three, Faulkner writes: “It was as if he couldn't get religion and that galloping cavalry and his dead grandfather shot from the galloping horse untangled from each other, even in the pulpit. And that he could not untangle them in his private life, at home either, perhaps.” (Faulkner, p. 66) Considering that Hightower’s isolation is derived from his inability to unite the past and present in a harmonious fashion, his inability to provide what his wife needed from her husband, and his choice to dissociate himself from society, it may seem that his isolation is self-imposed, which is true to a point. Hightower’s isolation comes from choices that he made under circumstances that were created …show more content…
Hightower expresses that one must find a way to integrate the past into the present and use hard-earned lesson from the past to move forward into a bright and successful future. Lena’s plight expresses that faith and gratitude can go a long way, but that being too passive can lead to inevitable isolation from the community. Perhaps most significantly, Joe Christmas’ story expresses that one must accept responsibility for his/her actions and embrace who they are before it is too