Escaping The Conclusion - Essay Example

There is no escaping the conclusion that William Faulkner’s Darl Bundren in As I Lay Dying is unusual. However, nothing in Darl’s life is usual and taking a subjective view of the events, his family relations and his response to them, Darl is quite sane and rational. In a novel which epitomizes stream of consciousness literature, As I Lay Dying is narrated through the voices of fifteen different characters with Darl emerging as Faulkner’s most complex creation. Darl narrates most of the first section of As I Lay Dying and by doing so the reader is able to connect to his inner thoughts and perceptions. Darl is not only a deep thinker, but very observant youth.(Wagner 1973) He immediately emerges as a unique character with what might amount to clairvoyance . Early on the reader is aware of this when Darl describes his younger brother Jewel who is behind him. He is able to discern that: “Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the floor in four strides.’”(Faulkner 2000 p3) Obviously, Darl is able to see things that the ordinary person cannot see and this characterization sets him apart from the others giving rise to the perception that he is insane. Cora Tull, a neighbor refers to Darl as unsettling and strang. She describes him as: “the one that folks says is queer, lazy, pottering about the place no better than Anse.”(Faulkner 2000 p. 19) Be that as it may, Darl appears to be the sharper of the Bundrens and his philosophical nature may have confined him to a somewhat dreamy existence. While he says little, he is often times engaged in deep thought. It is indeed ironic that for a boy who has little to say, Darl conducts at least nineteen monologues throughout Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Early on Cora describes what she observes of Darl at Addies bedside: ‘”What you want, Darl?” Dewey Dell said, not stopping the fan, speaking up quick, keeping even him from her. He didnt answer. He just stood and looked at his dying mother, his heart too full for words”. (Faulkner 2000 p 26). Tull puts it in perspective when she adds: “‘he is looking at me. He dont say nothing; just looking at me with them queer eyes of hisn that makes folks talk" (Faulkner 2000 p126) Vernon Tull on the other hand expresses awe and fear of Darl’s clairvoyance. He notes that: “He [Darl] is looking at me. . . . Its like he had got into the inside of you, someway. Like somehow you was looking at yourself and your doing outen his eyes.”(Faulkner 2000 p. 126) Dr. William Marlang maintains that: “Darls extra-sensory vision and perception allow him to penetrate the minds of other people.”(Marling 1988) It is the fear of the power associated with Darl’s clairvoyance that ultimately accounts for his family’s decision to send him to a mental institution. Darl alienates himself from the community and others fear getting too close to him. The fear is grounded in their knowledge that he will learn some ugly, hidden truth. A truth they do not wish to share with others. It is ultimately this fear that drives his family to have him committed to an institution for the mentally impaired by the end of the novel. Darl’s detachment and estrangement from his family after his mother’s death is explained by Darl in the following passage: "It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread an not the interval between." (Faulkner 2000 p. 139) He is obviously the most conscientious Brunden. But at the same time Darl is the most detached. His detachment is so disturbing to the remaining Bundrens that they have always considered him to be rather odd. In his detachment however, he knows things about his other family members that the others don’t know. For instance he knows that his sister, Dewey Dell is pregnant and he is also aware, that Jewel is not his father’s son making him only his half-brother. Darl’s clairvoyant powers and powers of observation come together in the following observation of Dewey: "She cried hard, maybe because she had to cry so quiet; maybe because she felt the same way about tears she did about deceit, hating herself for doing it, hating him because she had to. And then I knew that I knew. I knew that as plain on that day as I knew about Dewey Dell on that day."(Faulkner, 2000 p. 129) While arson is a serious crime, Darl’s motives are pure. He is frustrated by the journey to Jefferson for his mother’s burial. His family’s motives for having him committed are not entirely pure, however. For instance, his sister Dewel, who becomes aware that her brother knows or suspects that she is pregnant is among the first of the Brundens to restrain Darl when the staff from the mental institution arrives to take him away. His mother Addie Bundren acted as the tie that bound her family together. Her death ended that tie and further isolated Darl from his family. She was the one person that Darl was able to identify with. While Darl’s family is having difficulty letting go of Addie following her death, Darl appears to have no such inhibitions. The following exchange demonstrates the point: “’Jewel’s mother is a horse,’ Darl said. ‘Then mine can be a fish, can’t it, Darl?’ I said. ‘Then what is your ma, Darl?’ I said. ‘I haven’t got ere one,’ Darl said. “Because if I had one, it is was. And if it was, it cant be is. Can it?’”(Faulkner, 2000 p.99) This passage is also evidence of Darl’s philosophical nature in relation to Jewel’s affection for his horse. Andre Bleikasten explains of Jewel that: “he cherishes it as his prize possession; he never leaves it, even sleeps with it, and permits no one except himself to take care of it. . . . Darl does not fail to identify the treasured animal as a mother surrogate. . . .” (Bleikasten 1973 pp92-93) The carelessness he demonstrated when crossing the river on foot is symbolic of his willingness to let go of his mother. He had difficulty holding onto his mother’s coffin and in a way, Darl is demonstrating a consciousness that his mother rejected him by dying and he was repaying her in kind, by letting go of her coffin. Halfway to Jefferson from Mottson, Mississippi, the Bundrens stop for the night at Gillespie’s place. At some point during the night, the barn in which Addie’s coffin is reposed catches afire. We learn that Darl had set the fire to the barn. But as usual his actions compromise his pure motives. Darl is tired of the journey and does not want to continue with it. Yet he has no desire to be separated from his family. He wants the journey aborted and his family returned to their familiar and safe surroundings. His younger brother Vandaram is aware that Darl set the fire and he shares this information with Dewel. Here we get the sense of sibling Unity and Dewel’s desire to protect her brother from the serious consequences that inevitably follow arson. She advises Vardaram not to repeat what he had just told her. Darl’s desire to end the journey is as much for preserving the integrity of this mother’s memory as for his desire to return home. He loathes the unwanted attention that his mother’s decomposing body attracts. In his own way he thinks his mother wishes to terminate the journey since it could not be accomplished more expeditiously. When Darl and Vardaram listen to the noises emanating from Addie’s decomposing body, Darl is convinced that his mother is talking to them. In many ways, Faulkner marks Addie’s poignancy and stronghold over the Brundels even in death. Although this is felf throughout the novel, it is more profoundly felt at this stage of the plot. Cash, Darl’s carpenter brother does not think that Darl is insane. In his view, no individual is altogether insane or sane, its just a matter of collective perceptions. He observes: "Sometimes I aint so sho whos got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. Its like it aint so much what a fellow does, but its the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it."(Faulkner, 2000 p. 223) Cash accepts his father’s decision to have Darl committed to a mental institution as it is the lesser of two evils. While he is not prepared to admit that Darl is crazy, Cash does accept that Darl has no real explanation for destroying the barn by fire and would obviously end up imprisoned for his crime. Therefore, institutionalization was perferable. In Cash’s view, Darl is simply outnumbered. Darl is not adhering to societal norms and though he may be right in his refusing to adhere to normative conduct, society is at liberty to impose its will upon Darl. Later after Darl’s banishment, Cash comes back to the thought of insanity and ponders: “Its like there was a fellow in every man thats done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.” (Faulkner, 2000 p. 238) In other words the line between sanity and insanity is not clearly defined and man in his hypocrisy has blurred the lines himself. Cash is also expressing guilt at Darl’s fate and his part in it. He is poignantly aware of the fact that he indorses societal norms and by doing so he is as hypocritical as society is. The entire journey and all the trials and tribulations that culminate in Darl’s final act of frustration seem absurd. It is clearl that Darl is not insane, that much can be gleaned from his powers of reasoning. The fact that he laughs might easily be a manifestation that he comes to the realization that should he not laugh he migh go insane. When Cash captures Darl he stops laughing and says: “‘Do you want me to go [to a mental hospital]?’ Cash answers: ‘Itll be better for you.’ “(Faulkner, 2000 p. 238) Darl is not insane however. He is a confused young man acting out against unsual circumstances and events. It is obvious throughout the novel that Darl has difficulty with self-perception and self-identity. This confusion is brought about by his aloof nature and the detachment he feels and practices as a result of his insights. However, the events culminating in his mother’s death and the ensuing journey only served to isolate Darl even more. It is this isolation that ultimately drives Darl to utter dispair and makes it easier for his family to send him to the mental institution. As a result of the confusion and grief together with the tumultuous journey, it is not surprising that Darl acted out. He could no longer cope with the family’s desire to hold on to a mother that left them. In the end he is the sacrificial lamb. He was sent to the mental institution to avoid a law suit against the Bundren. But it is nothing more than a dramatic indictment of Darl’s real place in the Bundren family. It is obvious that the Bundrens are a dysfunctional family. The great trouble that they endure by keeping a decomposing body on their journey to a burial ground is evidence enough. Darl is perhaps the only rations Bundren since he is the only one to recognize the dishonor this kind of tenacity does to his mother’s corpse. By taking the reader on this journey, Faulkner skillfully demonstrates that Darl in the end is quite fortunate to break away from his family. His institutionalization is therefore viewed as an escape rather than imprisonment. Darl’s reaction to his institutionalization is in hindsight not a manifestation of insanity, but rather one of sanity,. On his journey to the mental hospital via train to Jackson, Darl laughs at everything that catches his fancy. He merely says, "Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes."(Faulkner, 2000 p. 244) Darl obviously feels liberated. His laughter does not in anyway signal that he is surrendering to insanity. Bibliography Bleikasten, Andre. (1973) Faulkners As I Lay Dying. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Faulkner, William. (2000) As I Lay Dying. Random House. New York Marling, William Dr. Words and Images In As I Lay Dying. http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/jung/term.htm Viewed December 27, 2007 Wagner, Linda, ed., (1973) William Faulkner: Four Decades of Criticism Random House. Lansing, Michigan Read More