Education and Identity in Faulkner's Light in August: "This is not my life."

"This is not my life" . . . is a critical commentary on the character of Joe Christmas and his miseducation in William Faulkner's novel, Light in August. This short book consists of an introduction and two essays, the first of which compares Joe's childhood education with that of several historical Calvinists, such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. The paramount lesson for Joe and the early Calvinists is extreme hostility toward the self. Like many children of strict evangelical families during the 17th and 18th centuries, Joe is shown to internalize such a lesson, which extends tragically into adulthood. The second essay examines the direct consequences of Joe's bad education. Because, in childhood, his foster father blatantly denied him the chance to exercise his natural human capacities, Joe cannot, in adulthood, participate in making his own identity, and is ill-equipped to choose an enduring way of life. The second essay (or part 2) employs the theories of several notable philosophers of identity politics (Mill, Taylor, Appiah, Nussbaum) to elucidate Joe's paradoxical predicament of remaining frozen in identity confusion with nothing available but polarizing stereotypes.