Romantic, radical, and ridiculous: Faulkner's hero as an oxymoron - author William Faulkner

Style, Spring, 1995 by Smadar Shiffman

The very quality which makes Joe Christmas precisely what he is, for better and for worse, is his intractable individuality. It is this mark of individuality that gives him the strength to resist his stepfather and his grandfather's overwhelming fanaticism. It enables him to define himself against the world as an individual person, who, in the light of what he has managed to become against all odds, commands our respect. Predictably, this same volition drives him to murder Joanna Burden and most probably his stepfather as well, finally thrusting him toward his own death.

The young child, whose "otherness" was produced by the gaze of a crazy grandfather who stared at him incessantly, would not have prevailed thus far if it were not for his silent and stubborn resistance. Were it not for his extreme intractability, he may not have rebelled against McEachern and 'killed him; he might have found himself able to be accommodating and obedient instead. Indeed, if it were not for his hardheadedness, Christmas may also have been able to allow Joanna Burden to shape him into her idea of a "civilized negro." subsequently married her, and lived happily ever after.

It is Christmas's radical sense of individuality that both commands respect and yet is at the same time abhorrent and repugnant. Joe Christmas conducts himself in an inexplicable manner. Indeed, the novel is rife with attempted explanations, all of which culminate in Gavin Stevens's dark and incomprehensible interpretation in terms of black-and-white blood origins. Christmas's behavior is inexplicable precisely because it is so singularly individual; in fact it defies categorization as it can hardly be comprehended in terms of the specific and is utterly incomprehensible in terms of group or race, labels ascribed by the various interpreters located in the fictional world. Individuality is, as already mentioned, yet another romantic quality par excellence; alluding to other romantic notions such as authenticity, it evokes both Bakhtinian models of character construction and arouses at once admiration and respect for Christmas before it leads him to commit murder. Resisting his grandfather's attempts to ostracize him and his stepfather's endeavor to obliterate his very personality. Christmas's individuality is indeed admirable until it turns into a frenzy of destructiveness and murder, which is indeed abhorrent.

On the face of it, Isaac McCaslin, protagonist of "The Bear," seems to be cast in quite.a different mold. If Sutpen and Christmas lend themselves to characterization predominantly as "bad guys," McCaslin seems to be cast in the role of a "good guy." If Sutpen and Christmas appear to be typically menacing and hurtful toward others mainly through sheer indifference, McCaslin appears to respect others to the point of self-denial, if not total self-effacement. This very inversion, however, renders his character essentially comparable to that of the "bad guys." If describing McCaslin as excessively righteous is a trifle unfair, perhaps one might describe him as a radical adherent to the rules of "fair play."