PARTISAN REVIEW
Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Joe Christmas of
Light
in August,
the man with the invisible "cross" of Negro blood in his
veins, is named Joseph. "It is so
in
the Book: Christmas, the son
of Joe," and his name becomes "somehow an augur of what he will
do." At each stage
in
his life, in one way or another, he ·is violated,
wronged, whipped, until he ends his life in striking analogy to that
of Christ, being at the time of his death the same age as Christ at
his crucifixion; Faulkner makes much of it. Christmas is persecuted,
captured and slaughtered on a Friday, achieving
in
the end some–
thing like a glorification and even a spiritual resurrection:
lie j'ust lay there, with his eyes open and empty of everything save
consciousness, and with something, a shadow, about his mouth. For a
long moment he looked up at them with peaceful and unfathomable
and unbearable eyes. Then his face, body, all, seemed to collapse, to
fall in upon itself, and from out the slashed garments about his hips
and loins the pent black blood seemed to rush like a released breath.
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. They are not to lose it,
in
what–
ever peaceful valleys, beside whatever placid and reassuring streams of
old age, in the mirroring faces of whatever children they will con–
template old disasters and newer hopes. It will be there, musing, quiet,
steadfast, not fading and not particularly threatful, but of itself alone
serene, of itself alone triumphant. Again from the town, deadened a
little, by the wall, the scream of the siren mounted toward its unbe–
lievable crescendo, passing out of the realm of hearing.
As
Faulkner progresses
in
his work,
his
heroes-those who have
his real sympathy-become more and more like Christ. For Faulkner
the drama of Christ becomes the human drama as such. The most
admirable of his characters, Isaac McCaslin of
The Bear,
imitat~
Christ not only in death but in his life too; he intentionally follows
his
example. McCaslin renounces his property, stained by guilt and
greed, and buys himself carpenter's tools
in
order to be able to live
in
utmost simplicity: "Not
in
mere static and hopeful emulation of
the Nazarene as the young gambler buys a spotted shirt because the
old gambler won
in
one yesterday, but ... because if the Nazarene
had found carpentering good for the life and the ends He had as–
sumed and elected to serve, it would be
all
right too for Isaac
