Light in August, Ch. 1-2

1. effigy (page 21): an image or representation especially of a person.

2. Lena Grove is an unmarried pregnant teen traveling alone to the town of Jefferson. She is looking for the father of her child, Lucas Burch. After traveling for a very long time, she stops to rest at the side of the road where she meets a man named Armstid that gives her a ride into town on his wagon. He discovers that she and Lucas are not married, and knows that his very religious wife will not be happy about having her stay the night. Lena convinces herself that Lucas is indeed in Jefferson trying to make money for the baby, although the Armstid's try to tell her she is being naive. The Armstid's give Lena money, she uses it to buy food, and then she catches another ride into Jefferson where she discovers that a house is on fire. In chapter two, Byron Bunch who is a worker at the mill in Jefferson remembers back to when a man named Joe Christmas came to work at the mill. He lives in the cottage in the back of Joanna Burden's land where he makes and sells illegal whiskey. He also remembers Joe Brown who quickly developed a friendship with Christmas and wonders why the two of them are living on Burden's land. Just as Bunch realized that a house was on fire, Lena comes into the mill telling him she is looking for Lucas Burch. Byron instantly falls in love with her and then insists that there is nobody in the town named Burch. She tells him the whole story about her journey searching for the father of her baby, and Byron tells her about Joe Brown and Joe Christmas. When she finds out that Brown has a small white scar on his face, she discovers that Burch and Brown are the same person.

3. My first impression of the novel was that it is very confusing. Faulkner uses either very long drawn out sentences with little to no punctuation or very short sentences. In addition to this he uses compound words when they should not be compound words. For example, on page 11 in one sentence he uses the words "manlooking" and "bleacheyed". I have to wonder why Faulkner chooses to do this, is it simply to make his novels more complex or is there another reason?

4. a) In this section I find that Faulkner describes a lot of random things, or the surroundings of a character. However, he scarcely describes the appearances of the characters. After I read the first section I knew a lot of information about Joe Christmas, but at the same time I did not know if he was white or black. Is there a reason for doing this?

b) If people in the town of Jefferson know that it is morally wrong to be having a baby before marriage, then why is Lena so easily accepted into the community?

c) What is the significance to the color blue, or the shoes that Lena keeps putting on and then taking off?