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The natural human response to a puzzle is to solve it. This precept lies behind systems of government, modern science, and\u2014of greatest relevance\u2014the constant inclination of English scholars to interpret literature. In some cases everything goes well, but, at other times, it can turn into an uphill battle. Though this may frustrate us immensely, though it may go against our human need to find answers, those cases in which rational interpretation eludes us serve as an important reminder. Words, we realize, do <\/i>have inherent value beyond the message they are used to signify. One such case is found in William Faulkner\u2019s As I Lay Dying.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/i>When the novel was first released, it was highly controversial among critics and readers. Though the book is now accepted by most of the literary world as a masterful piece of writing, it is as surrounded by disagreement as ever. The thing is, no one is quite sure what the book means<\/i>. The general concepts, of course, are established. The novel tells the story of a Southern farming family through the death of the matriarch and her survivors\u2019 attempts to give her a \u201cproper\u201d burial. Their quest is related through a series of 59 first-person \u201cmonologues,\u201d with perspective shifting between each of the seven family members\u2014the main characters\u2014as well as several minor characters. Most everything one might say about the novel beyond this, however, is liable to questioning.<\/p>\n
Much of the work\u2019s ambiguity results from the style of narration. Traditionally, critics have read As I Lay Dying<\/i> as a series of formal internal monologues. Readings of this type are attempts \u201cto find meaning as statement\u201d (Slaughter 16) in the text. But meaning as we know it\u2014a layer of rational definitions behind the words, logically moving forward with the narrative\u2014is not to be found here. The issue lies in the fact that Faulkner\u2019s particular \u201cinterior monologues\u201d simply do not fit the standard form; they are plagued by anachronistic narration, inconsistent verb tense, incomplete thoughts, and impossible diction. Some decide he is \u201ca botched realist\u201d (Hale 5), while others simply feel he has misused this narrative technique. Either way, the question becomes, \u201cif Faulkner seems to misuse a narrative convention [interior monologue] that most writers employ for the sake of \u2018realism,\u2019 then what kind of novel has he produced?\u201d (Hale 5).<\/p>\n
In an attempt to answer this question, literary scholars like Carolyn Norman Slaughter have come forward in support of more \u201cnontraditional readings [that] are beginning to let the meaning lie while they follow Faulkner\u2019s strange experiments with time and space, with memory and imagination, with consciousness and unconsciousness\u201d (16). By divorcing As I Lay Dying<\/i> from any idea of rationality, readers can gain much more from the book than a frustrating struggle of ill-fitting interpretations. Faulkner\u2019s very specific use of language in his novel, when read for its own value, allows for an understanding of his characters that extends far beyond what they say and do, into the realm of each individual\u2019s inner-most consciousness.<\/p>\n
One of the most simple yet incomprehensible portions of the novel is Monologue #19. It consists of a single line from Vardaman: \u201cMy mother is a fish\u201d (Faulkner 79). There is no doubt that Vardaman\u2019s mother is not, in fact, a fish. Vardaman\u2019s mother is Addie Bundren, an unmistakably human woman. If one were to attempt a logical interpretation of this line, then, it would make sense to interpret it as a representation of his disorienting grief. The metaphorical language is strange, perhaps, but not incomprehensible. Attempts to do this, though, are constantly set back by inconsistencies in the text. An interpretive theory can go through only so much reinterpretation\u2014only so much bending, and twisting, and compressing to fit a new angle of the literature\u2014before it loses all validity. In the end, it seems no theory about this line can fit the novel throughout. There is no making sense of this strange declaration.<\/p>\n
The first appearance of the fish in the narrative comes even before Addie\u2019s death. While she is sick in bed, Vardaman goes out and catches a gigantic fish to show his mother (Faulkner 30). Already, in this small way, the relationship between mother and fish is being established. In some sense, it seems reasonable that Vardaman displaces the concept of his dead mother onto the fish. When Addie dies, there is this sense that she no longer exists; as Darl puts it, \u201cIf it is was, it can\u2019t be is<\/i>. Can it?\u201d (93). For Vardaman, then, it is not just a question of bringing her back to life but of bringing her back, <\/i>period. In response to the lifeless body lying in his mother\u2019s bed, ready to be laid in the coffin, Vardaman expresses, \u201cI saw when it did not be her\u2026 It was not her because it was laying right yonder in the dirt\u201d (63). The reader knows the \u201cit\u201d which had been lying \u201cright yonder in the dirt\u201d was the fish when Vardaman first brought it home. Here, he replaces one corpse with another\u2014the mother with the fish\u2014and, in so doing, misplaces their identities. Yet, with the slightest bit of pushback, this potential defense of Addie\u2019s existence falls to pieces. To start, why would the boy choose something already dead as his mother\u2019s replacement? He says the body in her bed \u201cdid not be her,\u201d but why should the lifeless fish be any more her than that other lifeless body? Then there is the added trauma of \u2018the killer\u2019 in the fish scenario, as opposed to simply \u2018the killed\u2019 in the other. Vardaman is that killer. If he is trying to salvage his mother\u2019s existence, why would he make her into something he\u2019s killed<\/i>? These explanatory loops just go on and on.<\/p>\n
Psychology aside, there are also passages indecipherable at the linguistic level. Take for example:<\/p>\n
I can feel where the fish was in the dust. It is cut up into pieces of not-fish now,\u00a0<\/em>not-blood on my hands and overalls. Then it wasn\u2019t so. It hadn\u2019t happened then.\u00a0<\/em>And now she is getting so far ahead I cannot catch her. (Faulkner 52)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is one of those segments that leads eminent Faulkner critics like Walter J. Slatoff to write, \u201cOne is puzzled by the meanings of many of the events; one is far from sure what the book is chiefly about\u201d (Kerr 5). If we can accept this fact\u2014if we can decide not even to try to understand passages like this one, where does that leave us, the readers? According to one theory, this strange voice of Faulkner\u2019s \u201cmakes us cease to regard language as a transparent medium by which agents communicate and instead forces us to recognize language itself as a determining agent\u201d (Hale 8).<\/p>\n
To take \u201clanguage itself as a determining agent,\u201d we must worry not about what the words are saying but about how they are speaking. In the passage quoted above, structure is of particular importance. The sentences are short, jerky, disjointed. If this is a view into Vardaman\u2019s mind, it reflects the difficulty of his personal position at this moment. The youngest member of the Bundren family, Vardaman is going through the grieving process in a highly tumultuous and especially traumatic way. As one scholar explains it, Vardaman\u2019s attempts to cope with his mother\u2019s death are, at root, verbal solutions (Delville 63). The boy cannot process this tragedy, so his verbal expression breaks down. The lack of coherency in his monologues reflects the state of Vardaman\u2019s mind: he is a child, and his mother is dead, and he cannot understand that.<\/p>\n
So he tries to think it through, tries to explain it to himself in a way that doesn\u2019t hurt so much, but there is nowhere he can go with that thinking. He remembers the dead fish and the dead mother and, in his mind, \u201cThen it wasn\u2019t so. It hadn\u2019t happened then.\u201d There is no knowing the antecedent of these pronouns. The \u201cit\u201d could be the fish\u2019s death, the mother\u2019s death, the killing of the fish, or even the catching of the fish. \u201cIt\u201d could be all these things together or something else entirely. The fact that the reader cannot know is symptomatic of the fact that Vardaman cannot know either. At different moments in the narrative, the fish means different things\u2014sometimes comprehensible, sometimes not, but always fluid according to Vardaman\u2019s mental state. What is most significant here is that Faulkner has painted Vardaman\u2019s character \u201cnot as he talks, acts, or otherwise appears to others,\u201d but \u201cas he \u2018really\u2019 is\u201d (Hale 9). By breaking down the boy\u2019s linguistic expression, the author has allowed a view of the private Vardaman, rather than his public persona, highlighting the discrepancies between an individual\u2019s internal and external life. The reader is, now, not observing Vardaman from the outside, nor even just listening in on his thoughts. Instead, the reader has been put into the position of Vardaman himself, feeling<\/i> the character\u2019s private responses when he or she could just be witnessing them. As scholar Dorothy Hale writes, this \u201cprivate identity is what makes each self not just unique but profound\u201d (11). Through study of Faulkner\u2019s illogical language and the way he employs it, the reader is able to gain access to that profound selfhood of characters. We do not know why Vardaman\u2019s mother is a fish, but we can relate to how, on the most personal level, his child\u2019s mind is comprehending her death.<\/p>\n
Another important consequence of reading the novel\u2019s language for its own sake is the network of linguistic connections it allows the reader to make. When one stops obsessing over the message the text is trying to convey, possibilities are opened for the text to express things that don\u2019t make logical sense. From the start, we have been looking at Vardaman\u2019s declaration, \u201cMy mother is a fish,\u201d only in terms of Vardaman and his mother. If we are reading the text rationally, this is the only way to do it. When we let go of meaning, however, a connection surfaces between this repeated phrase and Vardaman\u2019s sister, Dewey Dell. The word \u2018guts\u2019 is used ten times in the novel: once as a description of Vardaman\u2019s fish, and the other nine about Dewey Dell\u2019s pregnancy. Dewey Dell does not want to be pregnant, and her personal goal throughout the novel is to get an abortion, in order to spare herself the shame of a child conceived out of wedlock. She refers to herself as \u201ca little tub of guts\u201d (Faulkner 56) and feels that \u201ceverything in the world for [her] is inside a tub full of guts\u201d (56). The child, too, growing inside of her, is guts. About her lover, Lafe, Dewey Dell thinks, \u201cHe is his guts and I am my guts. And I am Lafe\u2019s guts. That\u2019s it\u201d (58). It is impossible not to tie this, on the purely linguistic level, to one of the first images portrayed of Vardaman\u2019s fish, when he exclaims to his father, \u201cIt was full of blood and guts\u201d (36). If one follows this image throughout the book, further connections between the fish and Dewey Dell\u2019s pregnancy emerge.<\/p>\n
There is one particularly powerful image in monologue #30, a Dewey Dell monologue: \u201cI saw Vardaman rise and go to the window and strike the knife into the fish, the blood gushing\u201d (115). When, in the space of her own mind, her own private \u2018reality,\u2019 Dewey Dell conjures this thought\u2014this sight, given the context, she could not possibly be seeing\u2014the reader knows it is a thought purely her own. Dewey Dell envisions this violence against that other \u201clittle tub of guts,\u201d just as she wishes to destroy the invasive \u201cguts\u201d in herself. In the end, though, she is unable to succeed in getting the abortion. Likewise, she never is able to cook\u2014and thereby destroy\u2014that fish (58). It is this sort of connection, fascinating in its own right and curious in its implications, which the reader would never be able to get at if not through language alone. It cannot be explained in logical terms; the young woman never opens up to her brother about her pregnancy, and there is no way he could have known the situation she is in or, more specifically, the unique language she uses to describe her condition. Yet, somehow, he strikes a note that holds true for his sister\u2019s most private struggles, cutting to the quick by making the fish a symbol of death and motherhood for both Addie and Dewey Dell.<\/p>\n
In Addie Bundren\u2019s sole monologue, the consideration of words and their value is taken up directly. Addie feels that \u201cwords are no good; that words don\u2019t ever fit even what they are trying to say at\u201d (Faulkner 163). This sentiment can be applied to the whole novel and everything Faulkner achieves through his manner of writing. Of course, one does not walk away from the book with the feeling that \u201cwords are no good,\u201d but there is <\/i>a sense that they don\u2019t quite match what they are trying to convey. Faulkner uses this flaw of language to make it more powerful, giving his words permission not to say anything. They must simply exist. They must simply feel<\/i> right. As Addie explains, \u201cwhen the right times [comes], you [don\u2019t] need a word for that anymore\u201d (164). This is true for As I Lay Dying. <\/i>When a character\u2019s sentiment is true enough, deep enough, the words that would normally describe it are nullified. To make his readers privy to the most essential bits of his characters\u2019 internal consciousnesses, Faulkner uses words that move in an around \u201cwhat they are trying to say at,\u201d allowing them, finally, to fit\u2014to be good for more than empty signification.<\/p>\n
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References<\/b><\/p>\n
Works Cited<\/p>\n
Delville, Michel. \u201cAlienating Language and Darl’s Narrative Consciousness in Faulkner’s \u2018As I Lay Dying.\u2019\u201d The Southern Literary Journal<\/i>, vol. 27, no. 1, 1994, pp. 61\u201372.<\/p>\n
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying.<\/i> New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1930. Print.<\/p>\n
Hale, Dorothy J. \u201c\u2018As I Lay Dying’s\u2019 Heterogeneous Discourse.\u201d NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction<\/i>, vol. 23, no. 1, 1989, pp. 5\u201323.<\/p>\n
Slaughter, Carolyn Norman. \u201cAs I Lay Dying: Demise of Vision.\u201d American Literature<\/i>, vol. 61, no. 1, 1989, pp. 16\u201330.<\/p>\n
Works Consulted<\/p>\n
Benstock, Shari, and Stephen M. Ross. \u201c\u2018Voice\u2019 in As I Lay Dying.\u201d PMLA<\/i>, vol. 94, no. 5, 1979, pp. 957\u2013959.<\/p>\n
Kerr, Elizabeth M. \u201c\u2018As I Lay Dying\u2019 as Ironic Quest.\u201d Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature<\/i>, vol. 3, no. 1, 1962, pp. 5\u201319.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The natural human response to a puzzle is to solve it. This precept lies behind systems of government, modern science, and\u2014of greatest relevance\u2014the constant inclination of English scholars to interpret literature. In some cases everything goes well, but, at other … Continue reading