25. Faulkner, Light in August (continued)

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner (AMST 246) Professor Wai Chee Dimock concludes her discussion of Light in August and the semester by mapping Faulkner’s theology of Calvinist predestination onto race. Using Nella Larsen’s novel Passing as an intertext, she shows how Joe Christmas’s decision to self-blacken expresses his tragic sense of being predestined, of always “coming second.“ Moving away from tragedy, Dimock reads Hightower’s delivery of Lena’s baby as inhabiting a liminal space between tragedy and comedy, as Faulkner gives Hightower a second chance at meaningful communal agency. She finishes by reading Lena Grove and Byron Bunch’s courtship as the comic end of Light in August. Warning: This lecture contains graphic content and/or adult language that some viewers may find disturbing 00:00 - Chapter 1. “Passing“ in Light in August 06:12 - Chapter 2. Joe Christmas’s Redoubled Double-Consciousness 10:01 - Chapter 3. The Sy