Hightower In William Faulkner's Light In August

William Faulkner’s Light in August follows multiple characters who currently in Jefferson, Mississippi by describing both their current actions and memories of the past, to show the connection and influence of past events on current situations. In the case of Reverend Gail Hightower, a defrocked minister in Jefferson, his current life is completely determined by past town scandal that involved his wife’s dubious behavior. Although Hightower is introduced in Chapter 2 in the context of Byron Bunch’s weekly, mysterious journeys, we are provided only with an incomplete snapshot of Hightower as “a man of mystery…and the fifty-year-old outcast who has been denied by his church” (Faulkner 49.) Despite his initial characterization, his character is more fully developed in the beginning of Chapter 3 (pg. 60-61), where the audience is exposed to
Although we do not learn until later why he had such a fixation on the town of Jefferson, it is obvious that his zeal for Jefferson was rooted in self-fulfilling reasons rather than those to serve the people of Jefferson. Hightower seemed to acknowledge his illogical excitement for Jefferson as he immediately tried to convince “the old men and women who were the pillars of the church how he had set his mind on Jefferson from the first…telling them with a kind of glee of the letters he had written…he had used in order to be called here” upon his arrival in the town (61). However, despite his efforts, the townspeople did not want him there, for they understood that he talked as though he “desired to live in [the town] and not [serve] the church and the people who composed the church” (61). This passage positions Hightower as an outsider to Jefferson by placing contrasting feelings towards his arrival in his love and excitement and the townspeople’s cold unwelcoming