sawmill

Sawmills (also known as planing mills) are the industrial center in Faulkner’s Light in August and constitute central landmarks in Jefferson and Lena’s hometown in Alabama.

The type of work done on a planing mill ranges but workers are “ primarily engaged in sawing rough lumber and timber from logs and bolts, or re-sawing cants and flitches into lumber” ( SIC 2421: Sawmills and Planing Mills, General ). In the novel, Doane’s Mill is described as potentially destroying “all the timber within reach” (Faulkner 4), regardless, the mill remains relevant throughout the years with new stocks of equipment and employees.

It’s common for males in either Jefferson or Lena’s Alabama community to be employed at the planing mill as a large percentage of the story’s male characters are employed by the mill at at least one point in their lives. In the town of Jefferson, Brown describes his work at the planing mill as “starting in at daylight and slaving all day like a durn nigger” (42). Interestingly enough, African Americans had lots of experience with mill work prior to this time period:

African American machinists were also becoming numerous before the downfall of slavery. The slave owners were generally the owners of all the factories, machine shops, flour-mills, saw-mills, gin houses and threshing machines ( The African American Intellectual Experience 416 ).

Many firsthand accounts from the same source attest to the supposed mastery that these African Americans possessed in the laborious work such as that done at the mill: “The South was lacking in manufactures... but what demand existed was supplied mainly by Negroes” (TAAIE 418). Although Joe Christmas may possess only the slightest black ancestry, the description of him having “worked well enough, with a kind of baleful and restrained steadiness” (34) gives the impression that Christmas is physically conditioned for this kind of work and thus aligned to the pre-Civil War concept of black identity.

In spite of the fact that a household employed by the mill is typically characterized as a “poor mill family” (73), there exists a deep-found concern at the knowledge that Joe Christmas may be a "nigger" and have been employed by the mill: “ “Did you ever hear of a white man called Christmas?” ... It seemed to him that none of them had looked especially at the stranger until they heard his name” (33).

This theme of racism likely extends outside of the text and into Faulkner’s homelife as according to the account of one Mississippi mill worker named Olstead, “Mississippi mechanics... resented the competition of slaves and that one refused the free services of three Negroes for six years as apprentices to his trade” ( TAAIE 415 ). According to one source, this fear of jobs being taken was not unfounded: “the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson gave birth to the years of judicially sanctioned Jim Crow laws and “racist fears”... during which William Faulkner’s most famous novels were written” (Kathleen 199).

Joe Christmas’ presence on the mill serves as a catalyst for chaos in such a small community and perhaps he realizes this as between him and Joe Brown, Christmas is the first to go despite his skill at the trade. More likely than not though, Christmas and Brown may both be assuming a deranged identity of the “new negro” - a “cultural renaissance” promoting the idea that African Americans best contribution to society were their cultural productions (TAAIE 410) as they take up selling moonshine in place of the low-paying work of the mill.

Faulkner, William. __Light in August.__ New York: Vintage International Edition, October 1990.

Heidi Kathleen, K. The Foreigner in Yoknapatawpha: Rethinking Race in Faulkner's "Global South". Philological Quarterly. 90, 2/3, 199-228, 2011.

"SIC 2421: Sawmills and Planing Mills, General." Encyclopedia of American Industries. Ed. Lynn M. Pearce. 6th ed. Vol. 1: Manufacturing Industries. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 322-25. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

"The African American Intellectual Experience." The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 403-19. Gale Virtual Reference Library.