SOURCE: Bleikasten, André. “Light in August: The Closed Society and Its Subjects.” In New Essays on “Light in August,” edited by Michael Millgate, pp. 81-102. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Bleikasten explores Light in August in light of Faulkner's depiction of Southern society in the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on his treatment of outsiders by the community.

Until the subject of a tyrant's will Became, worse fate, the abject of his own 

—Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

As has often been pointed out, none of the main characters of Light in August belongs to the community of Jefferson.¹ They are all outsiders, if not outcasts, living in isolation, and in sharp contrast to most of Faulkner's earlier and later books, the family here fails to serve its purpose as mediating agency between individual and society.

“The Community and the Pariah,” the title of Cleanth...