『팔월의 빛』에 나타나는 조 크리스마스의 모호성

Ambiguity of Joe Christmas in Light in August

This study is to examine ambiguity of Joe Christmas, the main character, in Light in August which is one of the greatest novels by William Faulkner. Ambiguity can be interpreted as a positive factor of a novel in a sense that it can create more diverse images and discourse in a text. It also has a perilous factor which can lead the readers into the realm of misunderstanding of the characters and discourse. For the readers with a critical view in the text reading, the feature of ambiguity would be the asset to enhance the diversity of reading of the characters and contexts. In the reading of the novel readers can glance at the dual or polar, sometimes contrastive characteristics of Joe Christmas but mostly vague in the novel. His nebulous and withdrawn identity produces the effect of going beyond the distinction of center and margin or the differentiated realms of center and margin. The identity of his fluidity freely comes and goes over the established and confined line by floating boundaries between others and subjects. He is the symbolic image of transfusion between the black and white. His bloodline is not easily revealed due to his unclear ancestry. Consequently ambiguity of Joe Christmas is interpreted as the mechanism to tear down the establishment of center and margin, and the realms of others and subjects. Even his death involves more extensive and transcendental characteristics of trespassing between center and margin in that his emasculated body signifies "the body without organs" which can be the basis of subverting or floating the firmly settled recognitive frame of occidental society.