In nine pages an analysis of Faulkner's conflicted protagonist includes his violent acts, religion, women, and racial identity. Nine sources are cited in the bibliography.
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and a young mulatto mans search for identity. The novels protagonist is the surly Joe Christmas, whose every action seems to be determined by an uncontrollable rage - against
the white members of southern society, women (both black and white) and the various types of Christian fundamentalist religion he collides with along his tumultuous journey. Joe Christmas would
not evoke any reader sympathy if he was judged by his violent exterior alone. But there is a battle being waged deep inside this angry young man for possession
of his soul, and it is these internal conflicts that occasionally spew out into violence against humanity. For Joe Christmas, the struggle to define himself began on the day he
was born. His birth, to a young unwed white girl and a reportedly half-Mexican, half-black man meant that his racial identity was ambiguous from the beginning, and that young
Joe, through no fault of his own, would be "condemned to a lifetime of uncertainty" (Singal 169). His grandfather, Doc Hines, is an avowed racist, who felt it was
his Christian duty to kill the black man who "raped" and impregnated his daughter, and it is his portrayal of white and black as synonymous with good and evil that
immediately plunges Joe into an emotional turmoil, from which he never completely disengages. Although he looks more like a black man than a white man, society sees him as
a nigger, and it is this confusion that ultimately becomes "an intrinsic part of his being" (Singal 169). Joe is faced with a racial dilemma. His coloring would
allow him to pass as a white man, which would enable him to establish a singular identity that would ease some of his internal discord. However, doing so would