52 pages • 1-hour read
Light in August
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Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
The town retells Joe’s final hours. Mrs. Hines, Joe’s grandmother, visits him in prison while Mr. Hines remains volatile outside. Townsfolk believe Mrs. Hines told Joe about Hightower: “that Hightower would save him, was going to save him” (448). Joe escapes from custody and returns to his cabin. He finds Joanna’s unfired pistol, then heads to Hightower’s home.
Before Joe’s escape, Percy Grimm, a young captain in the national guard, waits to be called upon. Assertive and militaristic, Percy sees White people, in particular White Americans, as the greatest race. Percy gathers other national guardsmen to patrol outside the courthouse. The sheriff dissuades Percy from carrying a gun, but Percy doesn’t listen. Joe’s trial ends. When he’s taken from the courtroom, he breaks away, and Percy chases after him.
Percy pursues, leading a group of men. He tracks Joe to the cabin and sees him obtain the pistol. Joe proceeds to Hightower’s house with Percy and the men close behind. Percy finds Hightower on the floor of the living room, his face bleeding, having been struck by Joe. Percy demands to know where Joe is. Hightower pleads, then lies—declaring Joe was at his house the night of the murder. Percy ignores Hightower’s purposed alibi. He finds Joe upstairs hiding behind a flipped-over table. Percy shoots Joe. As Joe dies, Percy descends on Joe and castrates him, sickening some of the other men: “Then Grimm too sprang back, flinging behind him the bloody butcher knife. ‘Now you’ll let white women alone, even in hell,’” (464). Blood flows out of Joe, and he dies, his memory already becoming a stain on the people of Jefferson.
Chapter 20 Summary
After the horrors of the day, Hightower sits in his house alone in the dark and reflects on his life. He remembers his strict minister father and his perpetually ill mother: “[Gail Hightower] grew to manhood among phantoms, and side by side with ghosts” (474). Although Hightower’s grandfather owns slaves, his father finds it morally wrong. Still, they both fight for the South in the Civil War. His grandfather never returns, but legend says he killed hundreds of Yankees. His father, on the other hand, studies medicine and spends his years in the war tending to the wounded and preaching on Sundays, never firing his gun.
Hightower learns his grandfather died in Jefferson. He contemplates his family history, then commits to moving to Jefferson and preaching: “Listen. God must call me to Jefferson because my life died there, was shot from the saddle of a galloping horse in a Jefferson street one night twenty years before it was ever born” (478). Hightower takes comfort and security in the church and God and attends a seminary to become a minister. He falls in love with a minister’s daughter, and they marry quickly. Hightower realizes his wife married him to get away from her previous life but accepts a passionless marriage. Seeds of doubt—about God and love—plant themselves in Hightower’s mind, but he keeps going. On the train into Jefferson, a vision of his grandfather’s death haunts him: Hungry, his grandfather tries to steal a chicken from a coup and is shot and killed. The killer remains anonymous to Hightower—but is likely a Southern farmer—and Hightower wails as the train pulls into town.
Hightower comes back to the present moment, the memories of his life still washing over him. He considers how he failed those around him. He wonders if he was destined to go to Jefferson to atone for his grandfather. Faces from his life swell around him. He regrets the death of his long-lost wife. He senses death approaching and tells himself he should pray, but he doesn’t. More faces come and go: Byron, Lena, Joe, and even Perry Grimm. The faces leave. The sounds of trumpets, swords, and galloping hooves envelop Hightower as he dies.
Chapter 21 Summary
A furniture repairman recounts his recent road trip to his wife. On his way to Tennessee in his truck, he picks up Byron and Lena and the newborn baby. Initially, the man assumes them to be a married couple. When the man learns they’re from Jefferson, he mentions the death of Joe, but they don’t acknowledge the incident. The group travels along the road, toward Jackson. Byron is polite and attentive to Lena and the baby, but the repairman senses a tension welling up inside him. After driving all day, the man offers to let Byron and Lena camp with him rather than find a hotel.
Byron finds firewood, and the group settles in for the night. The repairman overhears Byron and Lena in the dark. They’re hunting someone, and they aren’t married. They aren’t sure which way to go. Byron warns Lena they could be traveling and searching forever. He mentions marriage, but Lena is dismissive: “But that’s what he was talking about, and her listening placid and calm, like she had heard it before and she knew that she never even had to bother to say either yes or no to him” (501). After being rejected again, Byron walks off into the woods by himself. He returns later and quietly approaches Lena in her sleep. The repairman, still awake, wonders if Byron will try to force himself on Lena. Lena casually treats Byron as a nuisance and tells him to leave her alone. Ashamed, Byron goes into the woods again and doesn’t return.
The repairman, Lena, and her baby resume traveling the next morning. The man doesn’t mention the night before, wanting to mind his own business. Lena appears unphased by Byron’s disappearance. They press forward, Lena admiring the countryside. They come across Byron on the side of the road. He hops back in the truck. He’s made it this far; he won’t quit now. The repairman continues to quietly analyze his passengers: “I dont think she had any idea of finding whoever it was she was following. I don’t think she had ever aimed to, only she hadn’t told him yet” (506). They cross into Tennessee, and Lena comments on how far she’s come since leaving Alabama.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
The final three chapters conclude the storylines, and Faulkner’s messages to the reader become clear. Chapter 19 finishes Joe’s storyline with his death. Like always, Joe tries to run. Like always, he can’t escape. Joe’s failure to escape Jefferson shows his type of life can lead to an early and grisly death. Throughout Light in August, Joe demonstrates he isn’t a morally sound person. He’s a violent vagabond and the primary suspect in Joanna’s death. Joe’s hostility, however, stems from never being loved and from being treated with racist contempt. Throughout his developmental years, he’s routinely beaten, laughed at, and despised. By the time he meets Joanna, who tries to steer his life in the right direction, it’s too late. Joe’s character shows how a hateful society can produce a lost and violent man.
Joe’s final chapter also gives him moments of restraint, keeping his character from becoming purely an antagonist. Joe never fires Joanna’s gun. He hits Hightower but doesn’t kill him. As life leaves Joe’s body, his death becomes grand and transcendent for him, and a curse for the others: “It seemed to rush out of his pale body like the rush of sparks from a rising rocket; upon that black blast the man seemed to rise soaring into their memories forever and ever” (465). Joe’s spirit has power. He soars above the others. He doesn’t descend into Hell, despite what Percy wants. In the end, when the town becomes more violent, Joe becomes more peaceful, making his character complex and sympathetic.
Chapter 20 finishes Hightower’s storyline, adding comments on faith, community, and the past. Light in August leaps into the past often, and Faulkner continues that structure into the final pages of the novel. Hightower’s last chapter focuses on his family and their Southern heritage. The ideological differences between Hightower’s grandfather and his father (one a slaveowner, the other an abolitionist) suggest that the habitual racism in the South can be broken. The grandfather’s death, and the father’s survival, implies Faulkner views abolition and pacifism as better traits than violence and slavery. That the grandfather’s death was likely cause by another Southerner makes his death ironic and suggests the South is hurting itself through its own ideology.
Hightower takes after his father by caring for others and treating his Black neighbors with kindness; he even helps deliver someone’s baby. Nevertheless, the past is dangerous. Hightower doesn’t embody the qualities of his grandfather, but the man’s spirit haunts him. In his final moments, Hightower hears a war he never fought in, which overpowers the faces of the people he knows. Hightower’s ending shows how the violence and trauma of our familial pasts can impact future generations. The cycle of hate can be broken, but the past, and our own violent human tendencies, are difficult to break out of.
The final chapter concludes Byron and Lena’s storyline and subverts the gender roles seen in most of the novel. The repairman’s perspective provides an objective perspective on Byron and Lena’s relationship. It is Lena who pulls Byron along, not the other way around. The repairman also senses that Lena will never accept Byron’s proposal and that she just wants to travel, but she hasn’t told Byron any of this. She has secrets. In other relationships in Light in August, it is often the men who keep secrets from the women. Joe doesn’t tell Joanna about his bootlegging, and Mr. Hines doesn’t tell his wife he took Joe to an orphanage. Lena’s secrets, and her command over Byron, show that she won’t let herself be manipulated by another man after what Brown did to her. The conclusion of Byron and Lena’s storyline marks a break in the patriarchal gender norms that dominate their world and makes Lena a stronger female character. Byron’s final scenes likewise show how kindness is not enough to get through life. He cares about others, but he doesn’t respect himself enough to recognize he also needs to consider his own happiness and notice when others can’t reciprocate those same emotions. Lena will never love Byron, but he’ll stay, hurting himself more than anyone else.
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