Lightin August, as one of the bestEnglish-language novels of the 20th century. and also the most significant but controversialwork of William Faulkner, pictures a fictional county basing on Writer's homeand tells the story of several characters and explores themes of race, sex,class, traumaand religion in the American South.

The main plot develops through two paralle-contrastthreads, from the main content of the novel, Joe Christmas, who spends his lifefighting with tragic experience because of his parentage, to the integralframework of the novel, Lena Grove, who calmly accepts her dilemma of life andpursuit her love. And there remain other figures giving full play to thenarration and comment function, like Hightower and Byron Bunch, who movethrough their lives, affecting the lives of others, enduring hardships,overcoming obstacles, and sometimes succumbing to the hardships they face. In theend, aseries of chance encounters ties each of them to the others.

Being laureled the Noble Prize in 1949, thewriter had a few words when praised, which shows the valuable core of the work,“the old verities and truth of the heart, the old universal truth lacking whichany story is ephemeral and doomed—loveand honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” . And more than itswide range of thematic, the multi-clue narration, the complicated plotstructure, the frequent interruption of lengthy flashbacks, and the constantshifts from one character to another, all that increases the difficulty and thecomplexity of the research towards the book while provides more perspectives toappreciate it meanwhile.

In recent years, the critics all over the worldexplored it a lot. According to statistics, Faulkner is only second to Shakespearein regard to critical publication. Generally speaking, the critics mainly focuson the themes, the characters and characterizations, the narrative skills andso on. The theories contain the psychoanalysis of Freud, the Carnival TheoryBakhtin, the Eco-feminism, the archetypal criticism, the structuralism etc. Inthe countries across the Atlantic, comparatively speaking, the thematic studyon Light in August is most frequentlydeveloped. It mainly deals with religion and racism. In the part of religion,it also involves three aspects—religious view,religious theme and religious archetype. As for the racial concern, somecritics consider that Light in August is a fierce blow on the Southern racism.Others explore the racial identity and the racial ideas of the protagonist JoeChristmas. And the third aspect of academic research is the structure of thenovel. In China, the study is relatively late than western countries. It wasnot until the end of the 20^th century that the research on Light in August took shape. Thetranslator Lan Renzhe briefly commented the novel from several aspects, such asthe process of creation, the implication of the title, characters, languagestyle, time-space and plot structure after the version of Light in August he translates polishing in Shanghai. Professor XiaoMinghan published Studies on WilliamFaulkner in 1999, and it’s the first comprehensive and systematic treatiseof Faulkner’s study at home. Most academic researcher at home mainly cover thefollowing aspects.

This papermainly focuses on the analysis of the tragic destiny of the hero, Joe Christmasfrom the perspective of trauma theory to have a deep understanding of thenovel. And two reasons are for the research perspective.

Firstly,there have not been many theses which analyze the novels of William Faulknerfrom the perspective of trauma theory. This thesis strives to study of WilliamFaulkner with the perspective of trauma theory. However, at present, trauma hasbecome one of the main themes in the literary criticism as a kind of lifeexperience and human needs, which can be known from the time of current papersthat almost all of them publish after 2014. As for the hero of the novel, Joe Christmas,with typical traumatic symptoms has been the target of many similarinterpretation, like why his life ends tragically or his racial identity. Fewstudies analyze the figure from a professional psychology angle orsystematically relate the miserable experience with his cognition and mentalproblem his abnormal behaviors. Therefore, it’s still worthwhile to explore thecharacter and the work from the perspective of trauma theory.

Secondly, trauma theory, can leads us to a moreprofound understand the setting of the story and the design of the plot andeven the purpose of the writing by helping us look back to the history andunderstand the situation at that time. People who lived in the typical SouthAmerican society suffered the American Civil War and Reconstruction. It causedpeople the mental trauma that is difficult to heal and even affected several generationsin a negative way. In a word, under the guidance of trauma theory, theresearch of the figure will more reasonable, reliable and comprehensive.

The innovation part of my paper is the research about howthe miserable experience shape the character of the hero and left the indelible traumafrom the perspective of Trauma Theory and how those traumas result in hisabnormal behavior and tragic ending. As we all know, there is a certain relationbetween the inside mental state and personal behaviors under the extreme circumstance.Lots of questions need to be discussed in the story— how does the trauma happen in Joe Christmas? How does the traumasubvert his whole life? Is there any other factor aggravate or trigger his darkside of personality? Is there any possibility for him to cure and if yes, how? Allthese questions entail an analyses with trauma theory. Moreover, the paper aims tofigure out the writer’s intention of the setting and the plot in the work. Isthere a logic about trauma theory goes through the story? What does the writerwant to express by the creation of Joe Christmas? A clearer comprehension willcome out after these studies.

This thesis tries to analyze Light in Augustwith trauma theory. It can provide us a new view to appreciate the classic workand help us get more detailed information and understand their lives betterwith trauma theory. The aim of finding out the reasons that give rise to thetrauma is to guide people to avoid bad elements and clear away the origin oftrauma in their lives.

To conclude: thisthesis hopes to bring new light on Lightin August and make a