Although William Faulkner's Light in August was written in — and its main action occurs during — the early years of the Great Depression, the novel presents a much different economic surround. Instability constitutive of a society in economic crisis is transferred to the novel's character system, one that sees instability and violence as the effects of a fanaticism deriving from flawed character, rather than from class struggles inflamed by socioeconomic catastrophe. For the novel's aesthetics to cohere, the Depression, in numerous particulars — from the political economy of the South to details about the lumber industry — had to be obscured or erased. These particulars would otherwise disable the anti-radical politics embedded in the character system, a paradigm in which social change is brought about naturally and gradually by the “best whites,” politically moderate native southerners, assisted by the “best blacks.”
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