Exploration of Themes of Identity and Belonging in "Light in August"

"Light in august" is a novel that was written by the American author

William Faulkner

Il viaggio di Lena Grove

At the beginning of the novel presents the character of Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman who moves from Alabama in search of her father's father who went to look for luck and then send her to call as soon as he was settled.

But the "call" is delayed and our Lena decides to get into motion autonomously.

Lena slips over the ugly and ugly looks of society (she is alone, pregnant and at the second glance everyone realizes she is not married) and always finds someone good-hearted and generous to give her a hand.

Il protagonista Joe Christmas

But the real protagonist of the story is Joe Christmas.

Joe is a small orphan, with a white skin, but - perhaps - with black blood. We retrace his life from an early childhood into an orphanage, the flight, the chilling adoption, the new escape, until the time when we find him an adult.
Joe Christmas recalls, in some respects, the Bartleby of Melville, a small and dark, quiet and solitary character, eager for nothing but his peace and his habits, but with a fierce and irresistible note at the bottom, which brings him to commit some brutal crime.

The note "irresolute" of Christmas is his lack of sense of belonging, which forces him to hide, but also to reveal himself (it is always he who tells the "shame" of his origin) and that prevents him from accepting the generosity of others, the a few times he meets her (the adoptive mother).

Black blood - which has taught him to fear and despise - makes him unworthy to be accepted. And when this happens apparently, in reality it is only in function of this blood (the exalted and almost fierce and fanatical love of Joanna).