Light in August: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Hightower’s father was 50 when he was born, and his mother had by then been an “invalid” for 20 years. Hightower believed his mother’s disability was due to the food rationing that occurred during the Civil War. Hightower’s grandfather was a slaveholder but Hightower’s father refused to consume anything that was made by slave labor. This meant that during the Civil War, the only food Hightower’s mother ate was what she grew herself in her own little garden. When their neighbors offered them donations of food, Hightower’s father insisted that they refuse, because this food was grown and prepared by slaves.

Hightower’s father had been a minister, and when the Civil War began, he volunteered to go straight away, serving as a minister to the troops. Hightower remembers finding the uniform his father wore during the war in an old trunk as an eight-year-old child. Young Hightower was fascinated by the coat, but every time he looked at it, it made him sick. He would lose his appetite and not be able to sleep at night. He would ask the black woman who lived with the family, Cinthy, to tell him stories about his grandfather and how many Yankees he killed in the war. When he heard the stories, his heart would swell with pride.

Even when they lived together, Hightower’s grandfather and his son were exact opposites. Hightower’s father was rather serious and humorless, whereas his grandfather had a boisterous, vulgar spirit. Hightower’s father cooked his own food and refused to drink alcohol, while the grandfather, a lawyer, loved whisky. When Hightower’s father married, the grandfather gave his house to the newlywedded couple, but took the enslaved people who used to work there with him. He never stepped foot in the house again, although “he would have been welcome.”

Hightower’s father was an abolitionist before the word had even made its way from the North to the South. Serving as a minister in the Civil War changed him, and when he came back, he retrained as a doctor; his disabled wife was one of his first patients. Despite his fiercely principled nature, Hightower’s father was a strangely self-contradictory person. He couldn’t see the “paradox” in the fact that he was an abolitionist and had served in the Civil War on the Confederate side. This suggests that he was actually two entirely opposite people in one body.

The narrator describes Hightower as having grown up “among phantoms”: his father, his mother, and an elderly black woman named Cinthy who had formerly been enslaved by Hightower’s grandfather. Over the course of his life, Hightower forgot that he had ever seen his mother out of bed, and eventually came to think of her as not even possessing hands and feet. His father was “a stranger to both of them [his wife and son]… a foreigner… more than a stranger: an enemy.” He smelled and sounded different to his wife and son.

The third phantom, Cinthy, was taken away by Hightower’s grandfather when he left the house. When Hightower’s grandfather died, Cinthy at first refused to leave his house or believe he was dead. She waited for a year before coming to live with Hightower’s father. When he insisted she was now free, she cursed freedom as the force that had killed Hightower’s grandfather and declared: “Don’t talk ter me erbout freedom.” When he was a child, she would tell Hightower stories about his grandfather, the “ghost.” Hightower never grew bored of these stories, and delighted in hearing that his grandfather had apparently killed hundreds of men.

While Hightower was at seminary, he felt that he was called to Jefferson because this was where his grandfather died, and where his own life was stopped “twenty years before it was ever born.” However, he never ended up telling the elders this story. This was all because he fell in the love with the daughter of one of the teachers. They left each other notes in a hollow tree for two years before they met face-to-face. She ended up being a rather serious and humorless person, and the first time they met in person, she talked about marriage in a way that was far more practical than romantic.

They married immediately after Hightower graduated, and six months later moved to Jefferson. The passion was gone from their relationship, and on realizing this, Hightower observed somewhat neutrally: “That’s the way it is. Marriage.” On the train ride to Jefferson, Hightower sank into a kind of ecstatic delirium and began recounting aloud the stories Cinthy told him about his grandfather, at one point wondering if she’d invented them. According to her, after serving in the Civil War and killing many Yankee soldiers, Hightower’s grandfather was himself killed for stealing chickens from his neighbor’s henhouse.

At this point Hightower’s voice had grown high and loud in pitch, and his wife was begging him to be quiet, as he was attracting the attention of the other passengers. No one found out who shot his grandfather, he said; it was possibly a woman, and Hightower likes to think it was the wife of a Confederate soldier. Ignoring his wife’s requests, Hightower observed that it is little wonder “that this world is peopled principally by the dead.” Shortly after, the train arrived in Jefferson.

Back in the present, Hightower reflects on the trajectory of his life and wonders if he is to blame for wife’s transgressions and eventual death. He feels a hint of forgiveness for himself because he was young at the time. He also concludes that every person has a right to destroy their own lives. However, Hightower is then gripped by a feeling of absolute horror, feeling that he is trapped in the trauma and violence of the past. He feels that he is surrounded by faces, “composite of all the faces which he has ever seen.” He is convinced that he is dying and that he should pray. However, he cannot bring himself to try. He can hear the sounds of the Civil War.