To place Joe Christmas outside of society’s racial categories would be an act of rebellion against an order that no one else in the novel questions. But it's difficult to reconcile such an interpretation with Christmas's own racism and hatred of blacks. Does he refuse to accept the two racial categories, or does he just zigzag back and forth between them? What is your opinion? Are all three interpretations necessarily mutually exclusive? However you see Christmas, you will want to consider whether he changes at the end of his life and comes to some new understanding. You might argue that his allowing himself to be captured suggests such a change. But you could also argue that this action represents a final defeat or even that it simply repeats his usual self-destructive pattern.
Christmas’s name and several of the events in his life suggest analogies to Jesus. Some readers contend that Christmas’s life, like Christ’s, is one of suffering, sacrifice, and perhaps even redemption. Others suggest that the novel’s Christ symbolism links Joe Christmas to a broader mythology of which the Christ story is only part. According to this view, Christmas, like Jesus, is one of many mythic heroes who dies a sacrificial death, but his story does not validate a specifically Christian view of the world.
Yet still other readers can’t attribute either of these meanings to the life of such a tormented and tormenting man. Some of this group see the Christian symbolism as an ironic way of pointing out the emptiness of Joe’s "sacrifice."
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