Alienating language and Darl's narrative consciousness in Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying'
1994; University of North Carolina Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1534-1461
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoCritics have pointed out that in spite of apparent directness of monologues, some characters/narrators in As I Lay Dying use level of language absolutely incompatible with their plausible linguistic skills, as far as we can reconstruct them from their social background and samples of actual contained in text. In monologue #34, for instance, Darl, an uneducated farmer, describes thick dark current of river as silent, impermanent, and profoundly significant, as just beneath surface something huge and alive waked for moment of lazy alertness out of and into light slumber again (141). If such stylistic distortions occur mostly, and, indeed, in pervasive way in Darl's monologues, they are also noticeable, to lesser extent in degree and frequency, in thoughts of other characters like Cash, Dewey Dell or Vardaman, who describes Jewel's horse as snuffings and stampings; smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of coordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones (56). As Warren Beck puts it: At times it seems as author, after having created an unsophisticated character, is elbowing him off stage ... thus many of his characters speak with tongues of themselves and of William Faulkner ... on whole, it is not an unacceptable convention.... (43) Faulkner's style, if totally remote from what we could expect from child's language, nonetheless successfully recreates what happens in Vardaman's mind, and, as adds Beck, language used, though not stylistically rooted in his [the character's] manner ... is not inconsistent with his personality and sensibilities (44). (1) Furthermore, in spite of external incoherence of language used by narrators (the discrepancy between their linguistic competence as inferred from story and some of their actual performances in narrative), internal coherence is safeguarded. Each character uses same throughout, so that very stylistic inferences, far from undermining their credibility as narrators, create specific timbres that reader can progressively learn to identify. Darl's propensity to indulge in metaphysical reflexions, for instance, incongruous it may seem on story-level, contributes to fleshing him out as character. Faulkner's belief was that was the result of need, of necessity (Meriwether & Millgate 141), and that the work itself demand[ed] its own style (181). Style in As I Lay Dying, moving beyond realistic imitation of idiomatic speech and conventions of modernist monologues based on an equation of language and consciousness, is major key to understanding of novel which is also novel about language and experience and experience in language. Faulkner's stylistic incarnations can be justified in context of strategies, notably verbal, developed by narrators desperately craving for unity of experience and articulation, reconciliation of language, self and world. This perspective throws another light on voices of characters, in context of Darl's tragedy in particular, and on origin of his madness: monologues or voices exhibit at least so many strategies aiming at enabling Bundrens to overcome trauma of death and loss. (2) In fact, all of Bundren characters except Darl seem to be relatively successful in dealing with Addie's absence. Cash succeeds in converting his grief into concrete object: coffin he decides to build for his dying mother. His technical-mindedness and his obsession with a neat job enable him to overcome his anxiety. While Dewey Dell is too preoccupied with her pregnancy, i.e., presence of an alien, unwanted element in her body, to worry about her mother's absence, Jewel vents his frustration into (violent) action and curses. As for Anse, selfish motives--like his new set of teeth--gradually supplant his desire to respect Addie's last wishes. …
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