![]() ![]() Prior to the murder, Joe and a criminal colleague had moved into a cabin outside Joanna’s house, and eventually she and Joe had become lovers. ![]() The victim is a despised descendant of Northern abolitionists and had lived alone in a manor outside the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. He is suspected of having murdered a woman named Joanna Burden. The epic novel’s plot is multifaceted and includes a large number of major and minor characters, but the dominant presence is Joe Christmas. In the opening of the second chapter, he makes his first appearance: ‘He did not look like a professional hobo in his professional rags, but there was something definitely rootless about him, as though no town nor city was his, no street, no walls, no square of earth his home.’ He might be a Christ-symbol, but he could as easily be an anti-Christ-symbol. Critics have attached religious significance to this character. A man of black and white ancestry, Joe feels alienated from African-Americans as much as he does from white Americans, and he extends his brooding hostility toward both. ![]() “Light in August” (1932) is set in the American South during the era of racial segregation and is focused chiefly on a protagonist named Joe Christmas. ![]()
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