William Faulkner wrote a masterpiece of a novel in As I Lay Dying.
Faulkner chose an approach not usually used by many authors. He let the
story be told through the eyes of 14 characters. This approach doesn't
give you a narrator to "lean" on and the reader is forced to make their
own conclusions about the events in the novel. It is the reader's
responsibility to in a sense choose the best narrator and to judge the rest
from there. Some narrators such as Cora Tull can be almost discounted
in most cases because her perception of people is almost always wrong.
Darl is the most active narrator with the perceptiveness which he has.
Sometimes he is even able to tell what happens when it turns out that he
is not even there. It might be said that Darl is closest to Faulkner himself.
Surprisingly Cash is the character to close the novel, who up until the end
had the least sections of the Bundren family. Cash's narratives are given
in the past tense, almost from a perspective of distance and
An important aspect of the book is the fact that facial expression
plays such an important part of the book. Often times what we think and
feel are rarely what we say or do. In the book often times little is said
through their voices but much is said through the eye glances. Darl,
Jewel, and Dewey Dell all have different glances. It is these glances
though that bring so much to the novel. The glance of Jewel is most
often hostile. Dewey Dell has a lustful look in her eyes. Darl has a look
of knowing. Darl seems to have the power to observe and explain the
environment around him. This separation makes others around him think
that he is strange. Tull goes to the river to help them and when he arrives
Darl's eyes paralyze him. He says, "He looks at me with those queer eyes
of hisn that makes folks talk. Darl somehow knows that Dewey Dell is
...