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Chapters
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Chapters
Chapters at a glance
Light in August has 21 chapters.
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Chapters21 items
Chapter 1
Lena Grove, visibly pregnant, walks into Jefferson, Mississippi, searching for Lucas Burch, the father of her child. She has traveled hundreds of miles on foot and by wagon from A…
Chapter 2
The chapter moves back in time and shifts focus to Byron Bunch and his friendship with Reverend Gail Hightower, a disgraced minister who lives alone on the edge of Jefferson.
Chapter 3
The narrative shifts to Joe Christmas's recent past. The chapter covers the months before the murder, focusing on Joe's strange, violent relationship with Joanna Burden.
Chapter 4
The investigation into Joanna Burden's murder moves forward. Joe Brown, trying to save himself, tells the sheriff that Joe Christmas is part Black and is the killer.
Chapter 5
The chapter goes deep into Joe Christmas's psychology in the days just before the murder. Joe wanders the countryside at night, unable to sleep, unable to settle.
Chapter 6
This chapter moves deep into Joe Christmas's past, tracing his childhood in the orphanage and his early awareness that he is different from the other children.
Chapter 7
Joe's adolescence under McEachern is the focus here. McEachern runs the household on strict Calvinist principles, and Joe learns early that resistance brings punishment but that p…
Chapter 8
Joe is now a teenager and begins to move beyond the McEachern farm. He has his first sexual experiences and his first encounters with the way women and race intersect in his world.
Chapter 9
The McEachern chapter reaches its violent conclusion. Joe has been secretly seeing a waitress named Bobbie Allen, who is also a prostitute.
Chapter 10
The narrative returns to the present and shifts to Byron Bunch, who is telling Reverend Hightower about Joe Christmas's past.
Chapter 11
This chapter moves back in time to fill in Joe Christmas's relationship with Joanna Burden. Their affair has run through distinct phases, and now Joanna has entered a religious ob…
Chapter 12
The chapter traces Joe Christmas's life from his escape from the orphanage through his years with the McEacherns and into early adulthood.
Chapter 13
The narrative returns to the present and follows the community's reaction to Joanna Burden's murder. Byron Bunch tells Reverend Hightower what he knows about Joe Christmas and abo…
Chapter 14
Joe Christmas is on the run after the murder. This chapter follows his days of flight through the countryside around Jefferson, moving between Black and white communities, unable…
Chapter 15
Percy Grimm is introduced in this chapter. He is a young man who missed World War One and has organized himself around a fantasy of military order and patriotic duty.
Chapter 16
Hightower sits alone and thinks back through his life, tracing how his obsession with his grandfather's Civil War death shaped everything he became.
Chapter 17
Byron Bunch tells Hightower what has happened with Joe Christmas and the manhunt closing in. Hightower listens but stays detached.
Chapter 18
Lena gives birth with Hightower's help. Byron is present and the birth goes smoothly.
Chapter 19
Joe Christmas is captured, escapes briefly, and is shot and castrated by Percy Grimm at Hightower's house. Grimm pursues Joe with a kind of mechanical certainty that Faulkner pres…
Chapter 20
Hightower sits alone after Joe's death and lets his mind run through his whole life one final time. He sees clearly, maybe for the first time, how his obsession with his grandfath…
Chapter 21
The novel closes by shifting away from Joe Christmas entirely and following the Hineses and Byron Bunch as they try to help Lena Grove after she gives birth.
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