Abstract
Light in Augustwas originally about white people: Lena Grove, Gail Hightower, and Byron Bunch were at the center of William Faulkner’s initial conception of the novel. The murder and near decapitation of Joanna Burden was to be the event that tied these three characters together. Joe Christmas became the central character of the novel when it became evident to Faulkner that another element, an embodied racial signifier, was necessary to get at the heart of southern history. In Faulkner’s text, the brutal murder of a white woman, followed by the quick capture and lynching of a (reputed) black man,