Analysis

Joe, on the lam, slides further and further from his own existence, crossing over a threshold to embrace and embody his bestial associations. On the run essentially since he has been a teenager, he has fallen outside of time and no longer has any idea what day it is. This change in him signals an even more foreboding distance and removal from humanity, an even wider gulf between Christmas and any form of acceptance, salvation, or belonging. “When he thinks about time,” Faulkner writes, “it seems to him now that for thirty years he has lived inside an orderly parade of named and numbered days like picket fences, and that one night he went to sleep and when he waked up he was outside of them.” As Joe plunges deeper and deeper into the backcountry, the ties that bind him to ordered, regulated society are severed. Night and day, the broad categories that provide order and a sense of definition are rendered meaningless. Joe’s evolution and eventual slippage outside of time mirrors the personal journey of Hightower, whose self-imposed exile slowly divorces him from a sense of time as it governs the outside world. In his cloistered realm, Hightower slides dangerously into a world of his own making, where he is beholden to none.

The importance—or lack of importance—that time has to many of the characters is reflected in the general overarching structure of the novel, with its cyclical structure and temporal shifts, as the main current of the plot is continuously interrupted with flashbacks and recurrences of the same event as told from various opposing perspectives. A prime example comes in the account of Christmas’s attack on the rural black church. The man sent to summon the sheriff does not know how the scene eventually plays out, and he mistakenly believes that Christmas has been killed by one of the angry parishioners. The partial, subjective, or erroneous information that individual characters contribute to the narrative underscores the lack of cohesion and unification that plagues the characters of Christmas, Miss Burden, and Hightower.

This section of the novel marks yet another evolution as Lena returns, drawn back into the action and thereby shifting the focus from the dark musings and aggressions of Joe Christmas to her guileless optimism and unquenchable life force. Lena takes up residence in the now abandoned cabin on the Burden property, symbolically replacing Christmas and negating his destructive presence. Whereas he brought death and suffering, she brings new life in the form of the newborn son she is about to deliver. As Joe moves deeper into self-annihilation, his existence is effaced he stands outside even nature itself—“a foreigner to the very immutable laws which earth must obey.” Lena, conversely, is tied vibrantly to time, subject to a cycle governed by the natural realm. Her baby represents a hope and a boundless possibility that Joe was never able to fulfill.

Summary: Chapter 16

Byron finds Reverend Hightower sleeping in the yard when he arrives to tell his friend of Joe Christmas’s capture. The minister accuses Byron of using the situation to his advantage and that his kindness and charity toward Lena mask less selfless and more carnal and insidious desires.

Hightower muses that, since being defrocked, he has slowly slipped out of conventional time and entered an existence of his own making. He believes that suffering is the lot of the wicked and good alike. He also believes that joy and pleasure are complicated gifts that most people do not know what to do with.

Byron leaves and returns with the Hineses, who are revealed to be Joe’s grandparents. Mr. Hines, still in his detached coma-like state, rants and raves about the weakness and sin of his daughter Milly, Joe’s mother. Mrs. Hines then recounts the story of Joe’s conception, birth, and first months. Milly became involved with a worker at a circus passing through the town where they lived at the time. Claiming he was Mexican, rather than part black, he seduced the young girl, and the couple attempted to run off together. But they were caught by Mr. Hines, who shot and killed the man and forced his daughter to return home.

Mr. Hines then attempted to find a doctor willing to perform an abortion, but his anger and religious zeal got the best of him during his search, and he assaulted a physician before heading to the next town. There, he took over the church service, trying to convince the congregation of the inherent evil of blacks. When the parishioners tried to coax him down from the pulpit, Mr. Hines pulled out a gun and eventually found himself in jail. By the time he was released and returned home, Milly was about to have the baby. When Milly started going into labor, Mrs. Hines sent her husband off to fetch the doctor. However, he refused and merely stood guard on the porch with his shotgun, striking his wife with the barrel of the gun. Milly died in labor, and Mr. Hines went off again, leaving his wife to care for the infant. One day, Mrs. Hines found a note and saw that the baby was gone.

Mr. Hines arranged a job at an orphanage in Memphis, where he left the infant Joe on Christmas Eve. Joe was taken in and lived in an atmosphere of racial taunts and slurs until the day he snuck into the dietician’s room to steal the toothpaste and unknowingly witnessed her having sex with the intern. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Hines, knowing that the child was adopted and taken away, returned home permanently, telling his wife the child was dead.

Reverend Hightower remains unclear what Byron and the Hineses want him to do about the situation. Mrs. Hines says she wishes only to see Joe freed from jail for one day, to suspend time temporarily as though he had not committed the crime. Byron, however, wants Hightower to claim falsely that Joe Christmas was with him at his house on the night of the murder. Outraged, the reverend refuses and orders the threesome out of his house.