The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The group of men at Varner's store in Light in August are there on Saturday morning to watch as the pregnant Lena Grove descends from Armstid's wagon. They are described as "squatting" and "already spitting across the heelgnawed porch" (25). They "listen quietly" as the tells her story, and are all sure she will never again see the father of the child she carries (26).

A farmer in the Frenchman's Bend area of Yoknapatawpha. The narrative begins on the road that runs past his farm.

A stern and hardworking woman, Martha is Armstid's wife, who gives Lena Grove her savings from selling eggs when Lena stays overnight. In The Hamlet, her first name is given as Lula.

Henry Armstid helps Lena Grove on her journey to find the father of her unborn child by giving her room and board for a night and a ride the next morning to Varner's store. Armstid's first name isn't mentioned in this novel, but in other fictions he is Henry; his character in The Hamlet (1940) is far less admirable than in Light in August.

"Tall, young. Dark complected" (55). One of the "sawdust Casanovas" among the Doane's Mill workers, Lucas Burch impregnates and deserts Lena Grove in Alabama (6). He finds his way to Jefferson, where, unimaginatively changing his name to "Joe Brown," he takes a menial job in the planing mill, but he quits to join Christmas as partner in a bootleg whiskey business.

Lena Grove is at the center of one of the three major plot lines in Light in August. Born in Alabama in 1912, she moved to her brother's house at the age of twelve, when her parents died. When the novel begins, she is around 21 years old, more than eight months pregnant, and traveling alone and on foot to find Lucas Burch, the father of her unborn child. Lena is a patient, trusting soul who feels no shame at her condition; she is also self-reliant, asking for no one's help yet accepting it gratefully during four weeks of traveling.