The 1930s were a contentious time for race relations in America. Despite the decline of organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, which had renewed support during the 1910s and 1920s, racism was stronger than ever in the Southern states. Literature at this time was affected as authors included the clear distinction within social class related to skin color. Authors such as Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston published credible novels containing African biases at the time. Another American author, William Faulkner, born in 1897, finished writing his novel Light in August. A story that deals with issues of racism and class in the heart of Mississippi in 1932. His other works including The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! they include clear African bias due to the character's beliefs, the Southern setting, and the current period of segregation. In the novel Light of August, William Faulkner demonstrates the struggle to find personal identity in characters as he explores the idea of ​​racism. A personal conflict that Faulkner places his characters in is the issue of conforming to society's expectations. Some of the main characters in the novel include Joe Christmas, Joanna Burden, and Gail Hightower. Joe Christmas is the protagonist of the novel who struggles to find his identity and adapt to society due to his mixed race. Joanna Burden is a northern citizen whose relatives actively vote for black rights and who Joanna herself respects them: “They say she's still involved with the Negroes. She visits them when they are sick, as if they were white... People say that she claims that blacks are equal to whites. That's why people never go out there” (Faulkner 44). Caryl Klein quotes Olga Vickery's criticism... in the center of the paper..., in one way or another with the crucial events of the novel. These flashbacks to the characters' pasts also give the reader a sense of a story and more of a connection to the character's situation. Joanna Burden, Gail Hightower, and Joe Christmas all have relatively impactful personal stories that, over time, shape them to be who they are in the novel. Joanna's ancestors are not native to the South, their emigration to Jefferson included them in the coming process of Southern history. Joanna's father and grandfather were commissioned to go to Jefferson "...to help with the negroes free yourself..." (Faulkner 186). Joanna believes she is doomed because, as her father concluded in his graveside speech when she was four, the sins of white prejudice are "the curse of every white child that has ever been born and ever will be born. No one can escape it" ( Faulkner 252-53).