Formalist Criticism of As I La
In the book As I Lay Dying Faulkner utilizes differing points of view, symbolic representations of fish and a rural Mississippi setting to portray the major themes of diverse people, handling loss, and independence. Throughout the novel, Faulkner shifts the point of view from one character to another to allow the reader to gain insight into the events that are occurring and the attitudes and opinions that the characters in As I Lay Dying have. When the Bundren family is trying to get Addie's coffin across the flooded river, Faulkner makes definite, clear shifts in the point of view. Darl is the first character in line to recollect this event and he addresses the audience by stating"they stand-trees, cane, vines-rootless, severed from the earth, spectral above a scene of immense yet circumscribed desolation filled with the voice of the waste and mournful water" (142). Next, Tull describes this exact event, "We could hear the water hissing on it like it was red hot. Like it was a straight iron bar stuck into the bottom and us holding the end of it, and the wagon lazing up and down" (155). By allowing each character to recount the events themselves, Faulkner does an effective job of allowing the reader to understand the charact
Here, Faulkner shows the independent nature of the characters, especially Darl, by his independent thought process. Faulkner uses this fish image to symbolize Addie Bundren and show how one character grasps their mother's death. Jewel thinks of his mothers death, "Where every breath she draws is full of his knocking and sawing where she can see him saying See. Darl narrates the beginning of this journey, "We go on, with a motion so soporific, so dreamlike as to be uninferant of progress, as though time and not space were decreasing between us and it" (108). Peabody tells of this agricultural, subsistence farming life and how "even with the horse it would take me fifteen minutes to ride up across the pasture to the top of the ridge" (42). Therefore, the fish, which symbolizes one character's way to comprehend death, demonstrates the major theme of handling loss. Faulkner specifically uses this setting to help demonstrate the independent nature of all the characters. After the death of Addie, the Bundrens set off on a journey to bury her with her family in Jefferson, which begins the second main part of As I Lay Dying. He sees the fish chopped up in the pan and metaphorically compares this image with Addie, who is also dead, yet is lying in a coffin instead.
Common topics in this essay:
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Acceptance Essays
