Insanity In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
Kyle Monti
Mrs. McGrew
Honors English 11
11 March 2016
Darl’s Fall into Insanity in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is a very complicated book telling an emotional journey from multiple perspectives. Out of all these characters, however, Darl seems to be at the center of all the passages. He has a little more than a third of the passages and becomes kind of the central essence for the work. Darl starts of calm and collected, but eventually the journey wears down on him and he descends into madness. In Darl’s first passages his language is mapped out and used very well. By the end of the book his dialect becomes very different and he seems very distant from the things happening around him. Faulkner uses a great amount of skill and word choice to display this and shows a great amount of character development. Overall Darl’s descent into madness seemed to be the main focus of the book.
At a series of talks at the University of Virginia, William Faulkner actually touched upon Darl’s insanity:
“Darl was mad from the first. He got progressively madder because he didn’t have the capacity not so much of sanity but of inertness to resist all the catastrophes that happened to the family. Jewel resisted because he was sane and he was the toughest. The others resisted through probably inertia, but Darl couldn’t resist it and and so he went completely off his rocker. But he was mad all the time.” (Gwynn et al., 110)
Later when someone asked if his insanity is why he spoke more elegantly than anyone else, he simply responded, “Yes” (Gwynn et al., 110). Darl goes insane as the …show more content…
As I Lay Dying. New York: Vintage Books, 1985
Gwynn, Frederick and Joseph Blotner, eds. Faulkner at the University. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995.
Bowman, Sylvia. ed. William Faulkner. Twaynes Author Series:1966.
Gresset, Michel. Fascination: Faulkner’s Fiction 1919-1936. Durham: Duke UP,
Mrs. McGrew
Honors English 11
11 March 2016
Darl’s Fall into Insanity in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is a very complicated book telling an emotional journey from multiple perspectives. Out of all these characters, however, Darl seems to be at the center of all the passages. He has a little more than a third of the passages and becomes kind of the central essence for the work. Darl starts of calm and collected, but eventually the journey wears down on him and he descends into madness. In Darl’s first passages his language is mapped out and used very well. By the end of the book his dialect becomes very different and he seems very distant from the things happening around him. Faulkner uses a great amount of skill and word choice to display this and shows a great amount of character development. Overall Darl’s descent into madness seemed to be the main focus of the book.
At a series of talks at the University of Virginia, William Faulkner actually touched upon Darl’s insanity:
“Darl was mad from the first. He got progressively madder because he didn’t have the capacity not so much of sanity but of inertness to resist all the catastrophes that happened to the family. Jewel resisted because he was sane and he was the toughest. The others resisted through probably inertia, but Darl couldn’t resist it and and so he went completely off his rocker. But he was mad all the time.” (Gwynn et al., 110)
Later when someone asked if his insanity is why he spoke more elegantly than anyone else, he simply responded, “Yes” (Gwynn et al., 110). Darl goes insane as the …show more content…
As I Lay Dying. New York: Vintage Books, 1985
Gwynn, Frederick and Joseph Blotner, eds. Faulkner at the University. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995.
Bowman, Sylvia. ed. William Faulkner. Twaynes Author Series:1966.
Gresset, Michel. Fascination: Faulkner’s Fiction 1919-1936. Durham: Duke UP,