Contrasting Lucas Beauchamp of Go Down, Moses and Joe Christmas of Light in August :: comparison compare contrast essays

secernate Lucas Beauchamp of Go Down, Moses and Joe Christmas of Light in August Lucas Beauchamp, found in intruder in the Dust and Go Down, Moses, is nonp areil of William Faulkners most psychologically well-rounded characters. He is endowed with both vices and virtues his life is dotted with failures and successes he is a character who is able to push the boundaries that the fair South has enforced upon him without locomote to a sad ending. Living in a alliance which believes one drop of inkiness blood makes a person less than humanity and implies criminal tendencies, a order in which men deal Joe Christmas are hunted and killed for fear of racial mixing, Lucas is a character who contradicts all that we contain come to expect from a typical tragic character of complicated blood, such as Joe Christmas or Charles Bon. By contrasting the Lucas Beauchamp we find in the The Fire and the Hearth section of Go Down, Moses to a model tragic figure such as Joe Christmas from Light in August, one stool measure Lucas success by his own merit, not by his white ancestry. Environment is key to understanding Faulkners characters. Daniel J. Singal argues Faulkners intentions of creating Lucas Beauchamp as a model transitional identity, a bridge from Jim Crowism to the end of segregation (268). Segregation produces a coordinate of society that feels threatened by that which cannot be arranged into the roles of hierarchy. Andre Bleikasten states, To divide is to take up judgment, to name the categories of good and evil, to assign them to fixed locations, and to draw between them boundaries not to be crossed (326). Jefferson society divides its citizens into categories of black and white. Each individual knows where he or she stands each knows at a glance which category each other citizen belongs to, and treats others accordingly. Any deviation from this structure is a threat to the society (326). In Light in August, Joe Christmas poses such a threat to Jeffe rson society because he is able to cross the boundaries. He looks white, but allegedly has black blood. He never acted like either a nigger or a white man. That was it. That was what made the folks so mad. For him to be a murderer and all dressed up and walking the town like he dared them to touch him, when he ought to have been skulking and hiding in the woods, muddy and dirty and running.