Light In August Lesson Plan

Analyze Christmas's comments that he repeats while passing through white neighborhoods, that "That was all I wanted...That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years" (331).

Though Christmas acts as if his life and death and alienation are all foregone conclusions, his repeated invocation of "that was all I wanted" suggests some small hope that he still has for being assimilated into some kind of social structure. It almost doesn't even sound like what he wants is to be white, but to simply be able to live in a world in which whites are dominant. Because of his racial heritage, he can't even enter the unjust racial hierarchy of the postbellum South, and...