Cabin at Burden Place (Location Key)

The one-room "tumble down negro cabin" (36) behind the Burden mansion that Joe Christmas lives in with 'Joe Brown' in Light in August was originally built before the Civil War for slaves on the plantation, but has been empty for years before Joe moves in. After he and 'Brown' depart, Bryon Bunch moves Lena Grove into the cabin, and it is the place where her child is born. The day after that happens, Reverend Hightower has a vision of the place as it looked when the slaves were there: "the rich fecund black life of the quarters, the mellow shouts, the presence of fecund women, the prolific naked children in the dust before the doors" (407). Former slave cabins have appeared before in Faulkner's fiction (often occupied by descendants of the slaves who once lived in them), but this is the first time one of his texts depicts, from any perspective, the lives of the enslaved people who lived in those cabins.