Light in August: Allusions 4 key examples

Lena is moving through her days "like something moving forever and without progress across an urn." Faulkner seems to be referring to the art that often decorated ancient Greek urns. These large vase-like containers were ubiquitous in ancient Greece and were meant to hold food, beverages, and even ashes. Some urns were primarily ornamental. Both ornamental and functional urns bore intricate paintings, which often served another function: they told stories. By turning an urn all the way around, the viewer can often see a myth or story play out around the outside of the vessel. Because urns are round, the viewer eventually gets back to the beginning of the story.

Lena's story is playing out day after day like a story on an urn that keeps resetting once it is turned all the way around. This simile captures the monotony of Lena's life on the road. At the same time, it also compares her journey to something of mythological proportions that might be worth depicting on a precious work of art. As far as Lena's community is concerned, she is nobody important. She has no money, next to no social influence, and no place to live. Her family would rather forget her altogether because her pregnancy out of wedlock embarrasses them. Through this simile, Faulkner urges the reader to pay Lena the attention her community refuses her. This outcast woman is at the center of the story Faulkner is about to tell about the South, its history, and its future. Her journey to find the father of her child is in some ways just as important as, for instance, Odysseus's long journey home from the war in Greek mythology.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a Victorian poet known for his works about grief, memory, mythology, and history. His poetry is known for the way it uses not only written language, but also sound. Anyone might be swept away by the "fine galloping language" of Tennyson's poetry. Hightower, though, seems especially predisposed to it because of his strong interest in the past and his seminary training. He spent much of his life listening to and learning to craft sermons that relied on music and speech to move people's emotions. Hightower compares his reading experience to "listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to not understand." Cathedrals are specially designed to make sound bounce all over the place, resounding with extra force to drive home a spiritual point. Tennyson's language engages Hightower's senses and bowls him over just like the sound of chanting in a cathedral.

The key difference between Tennyson's poetry and a eunuch's chanting is that Hightower "does not even need to not understand" Tennyson. This line is one of Faulkner's frequent double negatives that takes some consideration to parse. Religious chants are often performed in old, sacred languages. In the context of religion, the sacred language itself is more important than congregants' ability to understand it. Hightower remembers listening to religious chants in a language he did not know and being expected to find them deeply spiritual. Hightower delights in Tennyson's secular "chant," which he finds more meaningful because it is written in English. There is no need with Tennyson for Hightower to pretend that the content of the chant doesn't matter to him.

Thematically, Tennyson also appeals to the strongest force in Hightower's mind: memory. Hightower was always more interested in his family history than religion, even during his seminary training. He cannot stop obsessing over the grandfather who died before he was even born. Tennyson's "chants" usually have something to do with memory and grief. One of his most celebrated poems is "In Memoriam A.H.H.," a long and moving elegy for a friend of his who died tragically from a brain bleed at just 22. The way Hightower swaps scripture for Tennyson in this scene suggests that he practices reminiscence as though it is his religion.

Kennedy is the sheriff of Jefferson. The man isn't sure that Kennedy will appreciate seeing Grimm's uniform because it might make him feel as though his authority is being disrespected. Grimm, who is the wrong age to have fought in any wars, has always wanted to be in the military. He got his uniform through a recent act that allowed civilians to take on some military duties and privileges, and he wears it proudly every chance he gets. However, it bears the insignia of the United States. The man thinks Christmas's execution or lynching is a town matter to be handled within Jefferson, not a national matter to be handled by the federal government.

The way the man juxtaposes Jefferson and Washington suggests that he may also be referring to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Jefferson Davis was widely regarded in the Confederate South as their own George Washington. If the man responding to Grimm uses "Washington" as a metaphor for the federal government, "Jefferson" becomes a metaphor for the South as a sovereign state. The man worries that Grimm's uniform will challenge not only the sheriff, but also the entire narrative that the South is in charge of handling its own "trouble."

This line is paraphrased from Hamlet. Hamlet and Horatio go up to the ramparts, where they both see the ghost of Hamlet's father. Horatio is upset because he does not believe in ghosts. Hamlet tells him, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." What Hamlet means is that in trying to understand the world, Horatio has created a rigid "philosophy," or system of thinking. Hamlet argues that the world is a surprising and unpredictable place. Horatio's philosophy might be useful at times, but it can never account for all of "heaven and earth." He should believe his own senses when they tell him something new he never imagined before.

Hightower paraphrases this line after thinking back on his expectations at seminary. He thought he was going to learn the ultimate truth about the world. What he found instead was a woman he fell in love with—the daughter of one of his teachers. Hightower is "not quizzical, not humorous; not unquizzical and not humorless too." He is free of any kind of extreme feeling. Instead, he seems to be neutrally observing his past and taking in everything he finds there. He paraphrases Hamlet as a way of accepting that he found something different at seminary than what he expected. Like Horatio, the world offered him a surprise he never could have foreseen.