The character of Joe

I don't like him much. Are we supposed to like him? I have pity for him, but no liking.
What does Joanna Burden see in him? Why does she love him? Does she love him? or is it just sexual attraction to a person she believes is Other in many many ways? The account of their love affair seems strangely unconvincing to me. Did he rape her initially? Why did he strike her when he realized she was no longer interested in a physical relationship? Did he care for her, at all, in any way?

Okay, I only have a few minutes here before I have to leave (and you've put out a lot to chew on :)) but I want to tell you that I was just thinking the same thing about Joe. I didn't like him, though I certainly didn't want to see him castrated. I don't think we're supposed to like him. That would be too easy. But I didn't pity him either. I felt for him as a boy and later as a teen. By the time he was a man, I just wanted the world to allow him to be, to live on his own terms, if that makes sense. As to his relationship with Joanna Burden... going to have to think more about that one. It was complicated, wasn't it? Initially, I will say that I never felt we got the full story of her Got to go now. Will check in later. Good questions!

This bit is the toughest to parse -- Joe himself as an adult -- and especially his relationship with Joanna. I felt sympathy for Joe, because he was so cruelly treated as a child. I think Faulkner does create these characters who are so badly damaged that they can never change the course of their lives. In fact, Joe seems to see and accept this predestination about his life, and only regains hope occasionally, to his peril. He is cursed, he knows that, so he just accepts it and does what he is supposed to -- act the part of the villain.

But Joanna actually gives him hope, I think -- he briefly imagines a relationship, a marriage, a child, albeit in a twisted way. But then he realizes that is not his destiny, nor hers, that it can never be.

I also think he hates women because he has been disappointed by them time and time again. The first girl who cared for him, Alice, who disappeared; the nurse who hated and feared him; the stepmother who never protected him; the whore who ditched him; and all the women he never even knew who let him down -- his mother who died, his grandmother who lost him, etc. On some level, he seemed to be punishing them all through Joanna, and punishing her for giving him hope. Although there is a lot more to the murder than that, I am sure.

In the end, it seems that the hope his grandmother gave him actually led to his death!

I was totally sympathetic to Joe. He didn't have a chance to be normal. Who was he to stand in the way of the condemnation of the Old Testament God and mankind? Instead, he doomed himself to a life of sorrow. He was a lost cause at the age of 5 when he couldn't respond to the barest acts of kindness from his foster mother and even seemed to encourage the beatings he received from Mr. McEachern.

The only tenderness I saw in him was in his infatuation with Bobbie (the waitress who spurned him). The pain of rejection completely turned him against women and he thought nothing of hitting Joanna. Maybe I missed the part about him imagining a relationship with her. I thought any such hopes came from her side, which made his underlying contempt for women come out in the brutal murder. Loved the line: "She ought not to started praying over me." Understandable after his many years of prayer and beatings in his adopted family.

I wore my brain out with my Hightower comments! This pithy offering will have to do for now. I've been reading all the different threads about LIA and have enjoyed and learned from everyone's comments.

I totally agree.