preview

Characters Giving Monologue William Faulkner’s Novel, As I Lay Dying

Better Essays
Open Document
Literary critic Patricia Waugh asserted, “Psychoanalytic literary criticism does not constitute a unified field....However, all variants endorse, at least to a certain degree, the idea that literature is fundamentally entwined with the psyche.” William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, institutes elements of the psych which allow the text to be analyzed through the psychoanalytic lens. There are several events that go unexplained in the novel and they all seem to revolve around Darl; the psychoanalytic lens can explicitly be applied to his character to best illuminate his spontaneous behaviors and asses his abrupt actions. Faulkner’s novel fixates on multiple characters delivering monologues, thus exhibiting multiple perspectives regarding the same scene. However, Darl Bundren’s monologues present more clarity which assist in his development as the primary narrator as the novel progresses. In the earlier monologues, Darl summarizes the plot and conducts the evaluations of other characters through vivid narrative speech. Conversely, as the novel shifts primary narrators from Darl to Cash, one can note the sudden transition is a factor of Darl’s diminishing sanity. Through the syntactic utilization of dysfunctional monologues, Faulkner highlights Darl’s advancing split personality. Darl utters, “ Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying light in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams. ‘Yes yes yes yes
Get Access
Related
Get Access