Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Light in August, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Gender, and Transgression
Freedom, Discipline, and Violence
Names and Identity
Strangers, Outcasts, and Belonging
Haunting and the Past
Summary
Analysis
After midnight, Brown drunkenly stumbles into the room where Christmas is sleeping. Christmas panics about the noise Brown is making, but Brown laughs in response. He doesn’t stop laughing until Christmas attacks him. Brown briefly passes out, but when he comes to, he starts laughing again. Christmas puts his hand over Brown’s face and suffocates him. The two fight for a while, until Brown eventually agrees to be quiet. Christmas stops pressing so hard, but does not remove his hand. He feels convinced that “something is going to happen” to him, and that he is “going to do something.” He considers killing Brown with a razor lying nearby, but does not do it.
The novel’s atmosphere of mystery and confusion is heightened by the ways in which the narrative suddenly jumps from scene to scene, often without any explanation or introduction to the scene being described. Yet while this is somewhat bewildering, it also gives the reader insight into different aspects of the Jefferson community, such that one can see the events of the novel from many different angles.
Themes
Brown falls asleep, but Christmas cannot. Speaking aloud, he tells himself he killed Joanna because she started praying over him. He is furious that he was “tricked, fooled,” because Joanna lied to him about her age and didn’t explain that she was going through menopause (something Christmas did not even know existed). He thinks it’s not her fault that “she got too old to be any good any more,” but that she is to blame for having forced religion on him. He undresses and goes outside into the dark night, carrying a knife. A car goes past, and he shouts at the “White bastards” inside. He goes back into the cabin, puts on clothes, and goes out again, this time going to fall asleep in the nearby stable.
This is the first time that the reader witnesses firsthand evidence that Christmas is not fully white. Not only that, but he seems to feel alienated from and resentful of white people, even though he can pass as white himself. There is also evidence that Christmas killed Joanna, seemingly in an act of cold blooded cruelty. His fury about Joanna turning religious and going through menopause seem to be manifestations of a deep-rooted misogyny.
Themes
Christmas wakes feeling rested after only two hours of sleep. He sees Brown through the window, and thinks about how angry Brown will be to wake up and find himself sober. It will probably only take him an hour to get drunk again. Going into the cabin, Christmas retrieves a magazine, his shaving materials, and a bar of soap, then leaves again. Christmas sits down; before he knows it he awakes, having accidentally fallen asleep again. He shaves and goes to buy some crackers and meat from the nearby grocery store. He eats while leaning against a tree and reading a magazine.
Christmas is acting in an erratic, haphazard way. It is very unclear what his plan is, or if he has one at all. He appears to be acting with some level of intention and purpose, but is also behaving almost suspiciously normally. Considering that he has just killed someone, it seems strange that he is bothering to shave, buy food from the store, and read a magazine.
Themes
Reading the magazine, Christmas finds himself distracted. He thinks: “Maybe I have already done it… maybe it is no longer waiting to be done.” He tells himself that he only wanted some peace, and reiterates that Joanna should not have prayed over him. He digs a small ditch and pours out tins of whisky into it, trying to cover the smell with earth. It does not work. At 7 that evening, he eats dinner at a restaurant in town.
Christmas has a strange conceptualization of both time and his own agency. He doesn’t seem to know whether or not he has “done it”—presumably meaning murdered Joanna. This paragraph suggests that he spent so long thinking about killing her that he can’t believe that it is actually done, and doesn’t remember actively doing it.
Themes
Get the entire Light in August LitChart as a printable PDF.
At 9 pm, Christmas goes and stands outside the barbershop and watches Brown through the window. When Brown sees him, Christmas keeps walking through the empty streets into Freedman Town, the black quarter of Jefferson. He finds the sensation of walking through this area intense, feeling that the bodies of the black people around him are “enclosing” on him, and that they are speaking a language he doesn’t understand. He looks at the cabins where these people live, observing that they are “shaped blackly out of blackness.” He can hear the voices of black women and thinks that it is as if he and all men have been “returned to the lightless hot wet primogenitive Female.”
Christmas’s behavior in this passage reveals his racist hostility toward black people—but this is of course complicated by the fact that Christmas himself apparently has black heritage. His specific thoughts, particularly the bizarre observation about black women, show how anti-black racism and misogyny combine to produce a strange, terrifying impact on Christmas’s psyche.
Themes
Disturbed, Christmas runs back to the white part of town, his heart beating fast. Once he is assured that the black part of town is behind him, he feels calmer. He stares at a group of four white people sitting on their porches, playing cards. He thinks: “That’s all I wanted… that don’t seem like a whole lot to ask.” He passes a group of black men and women, and curses at them. Disturbed, he wonders: “What in the hell is the matter with me?” He stays outside until the clock strikes midnight, then sets off for the burning house.
The contrast between Christmas’s reactions to the white and black groups of people is telling. He sees the white group as aspirational, yet is also bitter about being excluded from this community and way of life. Meanwhile, his violent reaction to the group of black people he passes further illustrates his racism, which is perhaps also internalized and self-directed.
Themes
