Light in August Characters

Joe Christmas is the closest to a protagonist that we have in Light in August. He is a young man growing up biracial in the American South. He's abandoned by his grandfather and sent to a white orp...

The daughter of an abolitionist family, Miss Burden has lived in Jefferson for over forty years. Her anti-slavery views make her an outcast in the town and she's often mockingly referred to as a "Y...

Hightower is haunted by his family's past. The son of a Civil War medic and the grandson of a Confederate cavalryman, Hightower spent his life hearing heroic tales about the American South and livi...

Bunch is characterized by his Christian work ethic and moral values. Refusing a life of wild excess, he stands in utter contrast to Christmas's illegal practices and lack of social responsibility,...

If Miss Burden represents one kind of typical Faulkner lady (the old Southern spinster) then Lena represents another one – the naïve traveler. Lena's travels begin and end the novel, and...

The father of Lena's baby, Joe Brown is a rakish kind of guy with little moral fiber. He boozes, gambles, and bootlegs, and he doesn't seem to have any sense of ethics or responsibility to anyone &...

Christmas's foster father, Simon McEachern, is a strict, stern man who's deeply associated with a brand of Christianity called Calvinism. Calvinists believe that humans are utterly sinful after the...

In Percy Grimm, Faulkner said that he "created a Nazi" (source: William Faulkner: The House Divided). Percy Grimm is certainly characterized by a fascist zeal for protecting the white South by lync...

Bobbie is a waitress at a local diner who also moonlights as a prostitute. Joe Christmas loses his virginity to her, but after he potentially kills McEachern, she wants nothing to do with him.

A paranoid, racist dietician at a white orphanage, Miss Atkins is responsible for placing Joe Christmas with the strict McEachern family.