Don't Stand Next To The Main Characters

In a chapter of How To Read Literature Like A Professor Thomas Foster makes the claim that it is a bad idea to be next to the hero. He claims that those closest to the hero(es) are usually the first to go, as they are used as a symbol to show the main character the price of his actions. This idea can easily be found in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying albeit in a different manner with different results

In As I Lay Dying there is no hero. Instead, the aforementioned claim revolves around the Bundren family, a family that just won't seem to change its ways, even when they are the result of problems. The major example, and the one that I am choosing to write about, is when the Bundren's ask Tull to lend his mules so they can cross the river. There had been a crazy storm, and as a result, the bridge that crossed the river had been destroyed by the flood. The Bundren family would not let that stand in the way of them granting their mother's dying wish: to be buried in Jefferson, where she is from. After arguing with Tull for a good while, the family convinces Tull to lend his mules, despite his reluctance. At first, all is well. Anse, Tull, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman successfully cross the river. Now it's Jewel, Cash and Darl's turn. They have the mules pulling the wagon, which is carrying Addie Bundren's coffin. As they are crossing, a log that was caught in the flood crashes into the wagon, and the mules drown. Now Tull is stranded on the far side of the river, and his mules are drowned. Faulkner uses Tull in the manner that many authors use the hero's best friends to prove to the Bundren family the error of their ways, unfortunately for Tull.

Sexism in Faulkner

Faulkner was fascinated by several facets of normal life. He was so intrigued, in fact, that nearly all of his literary works take place in a fictional county created by him, a county that mirrors normal life. Faulkner was especially curious about the lives of once rich families and their downfall due to internal corruption. The main source of this corruption? Woman. In at least two of his major novels, a female plays a predominant role, and it is usually a sexist one at that. In The Sound and The Fury, Caddy Compson, who is seen as a very promiscuous girl, is a poignant example of how far the once great Compson family, a family whose members included a judge and a civil war general, has fallen. In As I Lay Dying Dewey Dell is pregnant, a fact that Faulkner uses to portray her in both a negative and a positive (which I will come back to later) light. Dewey Dell seems a little crazy. In one scene, she imagines killing Darl with a knife she used to cut a fish earlier in the novel. As Dewey is the only living female in the novel, her craziness is more obvious than Darl's. Furthermore, when the Bundren's make it to Tull's farm, Tull repeatedly feels like Dewey Del is giving him a look seems like she is warning him to stay away, even though Tull has never had any intention to harass her in any way. These two examples paint women in a negative light and make them seem like intricate but paranoid and delicate creatures.

Faulkner also uses Dewey's Pregnancy as a commentary on the treatment of pregnant women. Dewey is afraid to tell anyone about her pregnancy, which might be why she imagines killing Darl, the only other person who knows. Dewey is afraid to tell the doctor, the only one capable of giving her an abortion. The fact that she cannot tell anyone shows that Faulkner believed that pregnancy should not be seen with as a harsh a light, whether good or bad, as it was at the time.

Vardaman's Importance

Vardaman, as the youngest Bundren, understands the world differently than the rest of the characters. Unable to fully comprehend everything, Vardaman attempts to understand one thing through the lens of another. For example, Vardaman uses the fish in order to understand his own mother's death. This becomes clear when Vardaman becomes irrationally upset over the idea that Dewey is going to cook the dead fish. Vardaman is trying to understand his mother's death through the fish, but he mixes the two together, and now believes his mother is the fish, as evidenced by his chapter on which he states, "My mother is a fish." For Vardaman and therefore for the reader, the fish is a symbol. Vardaman also doesn't understand the idea of the coffin. He thinks that his family is imprisoning his mother and that Addie will suffocate even though the family is doing what they should do and Addie is dead. Vardaman is so upset by seeing his mother in a coffin that he drills holes in it so that his mother can breathe. The coffin is also a point of conflict between other members of the family due to its different connotations. So far, Vardaman has acted as a lens through which the reader can come to understand different parts of the story symbolically, which is why he is critical to the story.

Stream of Consciousness

As I Lay Dying is a modernist novel using stream of consciousness style narration. Stream of consciousness is when an author writes down character's thought processes instead of telling the reader what a character is thinking and doing, and is a hallmark of modernist literature, and more specifically Faulkner. Stream of consciousness narration means that the reader is interpreting a character's interpretation of the world around them. This can be very confusing, which is why I find reading Faulkner so hard. For example, part of As I Lay Dying is narrated by Vardaman, the youngest of the Bundren family. Vardaman is very young, and as such, doesn't comprehend the world in the same way that most people do. A shining example is Vardaman's perspective on his mother's death. Vardaman doesn't understand truly understand death, so he tries to understand it through the fish that he had caught earlier. This was confusing to me at first, but I eventually came to understand what Vardaman was doing. The main problem that stream of consciousness results in for me is that sentences or passages will often have random interjections in the middle, making it harder to follow the story. For the most part, however, it isn't to difficult to follow the story. In fact, there is a major benefit from stream of consciousness.

Thanks the narration style, as a reader, I get a unique look at the way the characters look at and interact with the world. Characters' chapters are each narrated in their own unique point of view, so each chapter gives insight into the different characters. Darl, for example, has a very clear conscious and so it is easy to focus on what he is thinking. It quickly becomes clear that Darl sees almost everything. He even knows that his sister, Dewey Dell, is pregnant, even though she never tells her. Another character, Jewel, is filled with hate. His sections are full of angsty words, making it clear that Jewel is angry with the world. These are just two observations that the reader can make about Darl and Jewel thanks to stream of consciousness. Like Darl and Jewel, much is revealed about the other characters in the novel through their style of narration.