The novel is set in the American South in the 1930s, during the time of Prohibition and Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation in the South. It begins with the journey of Lena Grove, a young pregnant white woman from … See more

Major characters
• Lena Grove – a young pregnant woman from Alabama who has traveled to Jefferson while looking for Lucas Burch, the father of her … See more

Alienation
All of the protagonists in the novel are misfits and social outcasts surrounded by an impersonal and largely antagonistic rural community, which is represented metonymically through minor or anonymous … See more

1. ^ Ruppersburg 1994, p. 3.
2. ^ Lloyd-Smith 2004, p. 61.
3. ^ Roberts 1994, p. 37.
4. ^ Martin & Savoy 2009, pp. 57–59.
5. ^ Singal 1997, pp. 357–360. See more

Due to its naturalistic, violent subject matter and obsession with the ghosts of the past, Light in August is characterized as a Southern gothic novel, a genre also exemplified by the … See more

When it was first published in 1932, the novel was moderately successful; 11,000 copies were initially printed, with a total of four printings by the end of the year, although a significant number of copies from the fourth printing had not been sold by 1936. In 1935, See more

• Jukko, Risto (2016). Culture, Translation, and Intertextuality: An Exploratory Rereading of Cultural-Religious Southern Elements in William Faulkner's Light in August and its Translations in Finnish See more