southern novel ID
Dates: 1/15/05,2:29 PM through 1/15/05,2:29 PM (1 posting)
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southern novel ID
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FROM: misha stone <mishamstone@yahoo.com>
REC'D: 1/15/05, 2:29 PM
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lightinaugust/summary.html
Summary
A young pregnant girl named Lena Grove comes to
Jefferson, Mississippi, in search of Lucas Burch, the
father of her unborn child. On the day of her arrival,
Jefferson is shaken by a tragedy: the home of Joanna
Burden, the heiress of a family of Northern
abolitionists, burns to the ground, and Miss Burden is
found dead, her head almost completely severed from
her body. A man named Joe Brown comes forward to claim
the thousand-dollar reward for information regarding
the murder. He claims that Joe Christmas, a half-negro
mill worker who used to be his bootlegging partner,
had been Joanna's lover and committed the murder.
Byron Bunch, who helps Lena find a place to stay when
she reaches Jefferson, realizes that Joe Brown is the
same person as Lucas Burch, and that he is simply
using "Joe Brown" as an alias. Against the advice of
his friend, the outcast Reverend Hightower, Byron
installs Lena in the old negro cabin where Joe Brown
and Joe Christmas lived before the murder. He does not
tell her about the role of her lover in the tragic
recent events.
Joe Christmas, who was sent away from his orphanage at
a young age to be raised by the strict, almost inhuman
Presbyterian McEachern* lives in the wilderness,
trying to evade capture, and remembering his past--the
long road of prostitutes and fighting that followed
his killing of McEachern and his separation from his
first lover, the prostitute Bobbie Allen. At last, Joe
is unable to bear the struggle to avoid being caught
and the attendant inner struggle to retain a measure
of his humanity; he goes to Mottstown, where he is
captured. The townspeople are outraged that Joe, a
"nigger," would dare to lay hands on a white woman;
Joe only escapes lynching because a local man stands
to collect the reward if he is transported safely to
Jefferson. Joe's grandparents, whom he has never seen,
happen to live in Mottstown and hear of his capture.
His grandfather, the fanatic religionist and racist
Uncle Doc Hines, wants to kill him or have him
lynched, but his grandmother, Mrs. Hines, protects
him.
They follow him to Jefferson, where they meet Byron
Bunch. Byron takes them to see Reverend Hightower, and
asks Hightower to support a false alibi for Joe,
claiming that he was with Hightower on the night of
the murder. The alibi is tantamount to acknowledging a
homosexual relationship with Joe, however, and
Hightower, who has been accused of such a relationship
in the past, angrily declines. Shortly thereafter,
Lena's baby is born; Byron cannot find a doctor, so
Hightower is forced to deliver it himself. Through
this act, he begins to feel triumphantly reconnected
to the world from which he has been isolated for so
long.
Joe escapes from his captors in Jefferson and runs to
Hightower's house, where he is killed and castrated by
Percy Grimm, a racist army captain. Before Grimm kills
Joe, Hightower tries to claim that Joe was with him
the night of the murder. The claim fails, but the bare
attempt completes Hightower's redemption; when he dies
not long thereafter, he sees a giant, luminous wheel
made of faces from his life, and his face is included
on the wheel. Lena and Byron leave Jefferson with the
baby, in pursuit of Lucas Burch, who fled out a window
when he was taken to see Lena. Byron hopes that Lena
will give up searching for Burch and marry him, but
Lena insists on continuing the journey--possibly just
because she enjoys traveling.
Misha Stone
The Seattle Public Library, Fiction Department
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