Light In August Literary Analysis

Words are constant let downs. The right ones escape ones mind when they are needed and even if eloquently stated, a person’s true beliefs are never one hundred percent accurately divulged to another. Even in literary analysis essays (such as this one) it is difficult to choose the right words to convey critical thoughts. In Light in August (and in the real world) this inaccuracy creates disconnect and makes it so that people can never truly know anything for fact. This is especially evident concerning what society “knows” about Byron Bunch. Byron enters the mind of the society who he believes to be thinking, “you say you suffer…all we got is your naked word for it. And in the second place, you just say that you are Byron Bunch. And in the third place you are just the one that calls yourself Byron Bunch today, now, this minute….” (Faulkner 424). The purpose of this essay is to prove that people can’t be absolutely certain of anything about one another because they are slaves to language, a tool which can never be accurate and completely inclusive. This quote is multi-dimensional. Firstly, it is Byron’s thought, but it is his thought on what the town thinks of him. This layering and intertwining of thoughts shows how what one thinks they know could actually be a fabrication …show more content…
Firstly, there is the word naked which means lacking clothing, being stripped of cover or protection. Faulkner is therefore saying that Byron’s words are stripped and lacking proof. They are therefore inaccurate because if something is incomplete it cannot be one hundred percent true. There are obvious elements missing if a word in lacking a particular element. In this case, the town realizes that Bryon’s words are just that, his own words. His words may have their own meaning to him and a different on to the town which proves that the town can’t truly “know” Byron because language has once again failed