Parchment

Joe Christmas, the character that most closely approximates //Light in August//’s protagonist is described as “parchmentcolored” at various places in the text. Yet, the commonalities shared between this character and parchment, the writing medium, pertain to more than just color. Meaning and cultural significance get written onto and into parchment and Joe Christmas alike. In some ways, he serves as a receptacle for social and racial meaning as others apply labels to him and hence imbue him with race-specific values as they see fit. Taking the similarities between Christmas and parchment as a starting point, the following essay looks at how social actors come to define this character in ways significant to them and their social context. While the protagonist internalizes some of the social categories that are applied to him, this essay mainly focuses on the external community and how it constructs identity and meaning out of Christmas’ ambiguous personal qualities.

The text makes it clear that the similarities between Joe Christmas and parchment are more than skin deep. Faulkner writes, “His face was gaunt, the flesh a level dead parchment color. Not the skin: the flesh itself, as though the skull had been molded in a still and deadly regularity and then baked in a fierce oven” (LIA 34-35). The significance of this quote relies on an important difference between skin and flesh. Skin is the external, visible membrane that conceals and covers the flesh. The flesh is the soft tissue consisting of muscles and fat that is located internally between the skin and the bone. The narrator imagines Christmas’ parchment quality to be baked into the body at a level deeper than the skin. By specifically likening Christmas’ internal physicality to parchment color, the text reveals that these two objects are linked by more than just external qualities. One important similarity they share is that both serve as receptacles for meaning and cultural significance. In order to establish this claim, it is necessary to discuss some specific characteristics of parchment. Parchment is a tan-colored animal skin on to which words are written. The act of writing on this medium transforms it into something more than characters on a page. The story that the parchment’s words tell and the history of their writing imbue the document with meaning. But, that meaning is not fixed. It depends on the historical and political context in which this document is produced as well as the conditions of the present. Likewise, when characters “write” on or apply racial labels to Joe Christmas, they do more than mark his skin with a superficial color designation. In fact, the textual moment above specifically does not indicate his skin color—a central element of racial classification. Instead, the social designations applied to this character fill his being with meaning and history at a more profound level. They encapsulate a particular history of race relations that accumulates even more significance when considered in light of the circumstances of the novel’s present. For example, when the orphanage’s nutritionist shouts “nigger bastard” at Christmas, she not only marks his race and parentage, but she thrusts him into a specific set of social relations, as critic Laura Doyle points out in her article “The Body against Itself in Faulkner’s Phenomenology of Race.” Doyle claims that this act of interpellation constitutes the point at which Christmas’ being is “dramatically and bewilderingly colonized, taken up into a Southern script” (345). She claims that he “believes” (345) in this phrase even before he knows what it means. For the young Christmas, believing means internalizing the negative connotation he associates with this appellation. For the society around him, believing in this phrase means coding Christmas’ being in a way that carries social significance. The terms “nigger” and “bastard” acquire meaning from the long history of social relations in which they are used. That history accompanies these terms as they are applied to Christmas. Regardless of whether he agrees with the appellation, it is recognized by others and thereby codes his social being.

The text reveals that Christmas is particularly susceptible to social designations since his unique position as a “parchmentcolored” man of unknown background means that he can labeled freely. Following Joanna Burden’s murder, white society takes advantage of his ambiguous nature in order to excise him from their racial group. The way that this group establishes a distance between itself and the protagonist is demonstrated in the phrase “white nigger” (LIA 344). This phrase admits that his skin color is white while simultaneously racially affiliating him with blackness. This appellation illustrates the cultural component of race. It demonstrates that, as indicated above, race and people’s comprehension of Christmas is not so much about his skin as it is about flesh. While the modern racial system originally emerges as a classification system based on phenotype, it later encompasses supposed cultural distinctions that run deeper than physical qualities. In other words, despite one’s physical color, the “One Drop Rule” (an indication of one’s supposed cultural heritage) is a central factor in determining race. The cultural component of race includes an extensive list of social expectations for each race, which is the product of the long history of social and interracial relations. The cultural context provided by racial designation makes it possible for others to locate Christmas in the fabric of social relations. It enables them to comprehend his character in a specific light. Prior to Joe Brown’s revelation concerning Christmas’ supposed black racial background, the citizens of Jefferson find it difficult to make sense of his racially indeterminate skin color and behavior. The marshal reveals that learning of Christmas’ racial background affords him clarity about the person when he states, “A nigger…I always thought there was something funny about that fellow” (LIA 99). Brown’s revelation of Christmas’ race not only explains his parchment-colored appearance, but it apparently conveys something about his character to the marshal. The term “funny” flags an unidentifiable quality in the protagonist. It also signals a lack of identification or kinship with this character. The newly acquired knowledge about the protagonist’s race provides an explanation for the cultural difference that the marshal ostensibly detects earlier.

Christmas’ being functions like parchment in the way it passively receives the story that society’s authors desire to write into it. As the community’s designated “other” or indeterminate variable, his person satisfies their demands for what they wish to see in his character. Byron Bunch, recounting Joe Brown’s debriefing with police, suspects that Joe Brown/Lucas Burch uses Christmas’ race as a tool to shift the sheriff’s suspicions away from himself and towards Christmas. He does this out of an interest to obtain the thousand-dollar reward. Once he reveals that Christmas is black, he insists that the murder be seen in terms of race. He maintains, “I’m talking about Christmas…The man that killed that white woman after he had done lived with her in plain sight of this whole town…” (LIA 98). This moment illustrates how Brown’s application of race to the situation inserts Christmas into a particular dialogue of Southern racism. By stressing Joanna Burden’s whiteness, Brown calls attention to the deviant nature of Burden and Christmas’ relationship. He thus plays into a Southern culture that hates miscegenation and expects heinous behavior from African Americans. As academic John Matthews points out in his work //William Faulkner: Seeing Through the South//, racial politics and stereotypes encourage the public to expect specific behavior such as criminal acts from the African American and to treat the individual as if he/she is already guilty. He argues, “Stereotype insists that the behavior of others is wholly predictable because determined by nature” (159). After his supposed blackness is revealed, nearly the entire white community is taken up by the incident of a “nigger” who “killed a white woman” (LIA 304). The idea that a black man kills a white woman, fits nicely into racist society’s expectation of criminal black behavior. By focusing on his supposed connection to blackness, they comprehend the murder in light of their racist convictions. This leads many, like the sheriff, to demonize the protagonist. The sheriff captures the sentiments of the community concerning Christmas, the black murderer, when he thinks, “//Murdering a white woman the black son of a//…” (LIA 291). The outrage that the murder scenario provokes is result of the way that the community writes the script of Christmas’ life based on his supposed racial affiliation. It is able to do this because his parchment-like qualities provide a fertile receiving ground for racial tagging.

The analysis above argues that Christmas’ ambiguous parchment-colored appearance and racial past make his being prime real estate for being taken up into a particular cultural and racial discourse. Yet, critic Avak Hasratian views Christmas otherwise. In his article “The Death of Difference in //Light in August//,” he considers Christmas’ status in light of Agamben’s theorization of homo sacer and argues that, as one existing in the state of exception, Christmas’ life is marked by the “absence of a category where he could settle into some identity” (68). He maintains that Christmas’ ability to “exist between categories” causes a “categorical crisis” for those who try to pin him to an identity; this makes definition of his person “impossible” (62-63). He cites the community’s frustration with Christmas’ indefinite racial behavior as evidence of this (Hasratian 79). The text reads, “He never acted like either a nigger or a white man. That was it. That was what made the folks so mad” (LIA 350). Yet, the protagonist’s indeterminate behavior does not necessarily mean that his person resists classification. The white community’s view and demonization of Christmas as a black murderer demonstrates how society concretizes his blackness as a social fact, regardless of whether he accepts his subjugation or really has African American ancestry. Furthermore, allowing Hasratian’s comparison between Christmas and homo sacer, the likeness between these two figures highlights Christmas’ vulnerability to power rather than his escape from it. As homo sacer, life that “//may be killed and yet not sacrificed//,” he is integral to state or socio-political power (//Homo Sacer// 12). Agamben writes, “the inclusion of bare life [homo sacer] in the political realm constitutes the original—if concealed—nucleus of sovereign power” (//Homo Sacer// 6). This designation puts the social subject in a vulnerable position since the state can activate the state of exception in times of necessity making it possible to take life with impunity. Moreover, Agamben reveals that occupying a state of exception does not translate into a resistance to social labels. In his work, //State of Exception//, he details how the NAZI state evokes a state of exception to strip the Jewish subject of his/her legal identity. Even in such circumstances, this state still leaves the Jew’s social/religious identity intact. He writes that the Jews in the Nazi camps “along with their citizenship, had lost every legal identity, but at least retained their identity as Jews” (//State// 4). This moment reveals that the state of exception does not necessarily threaten one’s social identity. Likewise, during the hunt for Burden’s murderer, the protagonist’s life is threatened by vigilantes like Grimm while his identity as “That nigger murderer, Christmas” (LIA 346) is firmly established in the minds of the white public.

The analysis above establishes important similarities between Joe Christmas and parchment in order to explain how his being is imbued with social and racial meaning by community members. These people author an understanding of Christmas and his supposed actions based on what they believe about his racial heritage. Their assessment of his person carries meaning in the community regardless of whether Christmas agrees with or internalizes his socially-ascribed identities.

Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. //Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life//. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Agamben, Giorgio. //State of Exception//. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Doyle, Laura. “The Body against Itself in Faulkner’s Phenomenology of Race.” //American Literature//, 73.2, 2001, pp. 339-364. Faulkner, William. //Light in August.// New York, NY: Vintage International, 1990. Hasratian, Avak. “The Death of Difference in //Light in August//.” //Criticism//, 49.1, 2007, pp. 55-84. Matthews, John. //William Faulkner: Seeing Through the South//. Chichester, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012.