Light in August: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

This chapter begins with a reflection on the nature of memory. The narrator argues that “memory believes before knowing remembers,” and then describes a cold, grim building surrounded by factories. The building is housed within a 10-foot-tall fence, such that it resembles a prison or zoo. It is in fact an orphanage, where all the children wear identical uniforms. At five years old, Joe Christmas—a resident of the orphanage—is “like a shadow.” He has recently discovered the sweet pink toothpaste used by “the dietician,” which he enjoys secretly eating.

Joe is in the dietician’s room eating the toothpaste when she comes in with a young man named Charley, an intern at the county hospital. Joe hides behind a curtain and hears the dietician and the man having sex, although he doesn’t understand that this is what is happening. As she says “I’m scared! Hurry!” Joe eats a bit of toothpaste that he now doesn’t even want, and immediately feels it coming back up. He throws up, and the dietician finds him behind the curtain and grabs him, angrily accusing him of spying on her and calling him a “little n_____ bastard!”

The dietician, who is 27, believes that Joe understood what he saw in her bedroom and that he is planning to tell on her. She also thinks he is waiting to tell in order to prolong her agony. In reality, Joe thinks he is the one in trouble. Three days after the incident, the dietician confronts Joe and asks if he is going to tell, offering him a dollar in exchange for his silence. Joe wants it, but also doesn’t believe that she is really willing to give it to him. Exasperated, the dietician shakes him, shouting: “Tell, then! You little n_____ bastard!”

The next day, the dietician loses her mind completely. She seems calm, although she has totally lost control of her actions. She approaches the janitor and says that she knows he hates Joe as well. The janitor, a “hard man,” is only 45 but seems more like 60 or 65. They admit that they both know that Joe is secretly black, and that they realized this even before the other children started calling him “n_____.” The janitor started working at the orphanage around the same time baby Joe was discovered abandoned on the orphanage steps on Christmas Eve. He has been watching Joe for five years, waiting for the matron to find out the truth of his race. The janitor says the dietician must wait now too.

When the dietician suggests that maybe they don’t have to wait any longer, the janitor angrily replies that they do, calling her “womanfilth” and saying that her suffering is nothing compared to his. She replies that she’s also always known that Joe is “part n_____,” then adds that as soon as people find out the truth of Joe’s race, they will send him to an orphanage for black children.

Later that night, the janitor comes to the dietician’s door while she is undressed. Frightened, she tells him to wait, although he keeps slowly pushing the door open. When he enters, she realizes he has been watching her while she has fumbled to get dressed. They continue discussing Joe and what will happen to him if his blackness is discovered. The janitor looks around at the dietician’s “womanroom” with its “womanpinksmelling”; he exclaims “Womanfilth” and leaves. Horrified, the dietician leaps to lock the door behind him.

The next morning both the janitor and Joe have disappeared. The police are called, and at this point the dietician tells the matron that Joe is black. The matron is stunned and says she doesn’t believe it; the dietician explains that she believes the janitor kidnapped Joe due to the issue of Joe’s race. A few days later, it emerges that the janitor took Joe to a black orphanage in Little Rock. The dietician comments that the janitor is crazy, but emphasizes that Joe does need to be in a black orphanage. The matron says that they must “place him” at once (meaning find Joe an adoptive family). She asks the dietician to hand her the file of current applicants.

Joe wakes up to find himself being carried by an unknown man (the janitor). He remembers a girl he used to live with who one day disappeared, and thinks that she must have been taken as he is being taken now. Joe now recognizes the man carrying him; although he doesn’t know his name, he knows that the man “hates and fears” him. Having taken Joe from his bed, the man is now helping him put on his clothes. Joe does not see a difference between the black orphanage and the one where he previously lived. Still, he is not surprised when police arrive to take him and the man back.

Back home at the old orphanage, the matron introduces Joe to a stern man with cold eyes and asks if he would like to go and live with “some nice people in the country.” The man (McEachern) asks the matron if she really cannot tell him any more about Joe’s heritage. She replies that Joe was left on the orphanage’s doorstep on Christmas Eve, and that it is not a good idea to adopt in the first place if one is fixated on a child’s heritage. McEachern assures the matron that he will take Joe to live with him and his wife, and that Joe will have a life free from “idleness and vanity.”

McEachern takes Joe home and tells him that he will soon learn to work hard and fear God. Before leaving the orphanage, McEachern had commented that Christmas was a “heathenish” surname and that he would change it to McEachern. The matron did not object, and neither did Joe, who did not yet know the trouble this name change would cause him.