Biography of William Faulkner

Brief Biography

Born in Mississippi to a family of long tradition, but on the wane socially and politically, William Faulkner always had a strong sense of the past at the way it affected the present. He did poorly in school except in English and art. He dropped out of high school and took a variety of odd jobs. During WWI he enlisted in the Canadian RAF, but never saw action. He came back home with many affectations and now determined to be a writer. Working as a night watchman at the boiler on the campus of Old Miss, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Neither this novel or The Sound and the Fury did well financially. He married Estelle Oldham and had a child. To support his family, he took work in Hollywood as a screenplay writer, especially enjoying working with Howard Hawks on several well known Bogart films. His alcoholism and depression deepened. He continued to produce several great novels during his early and middle years, though his later works show his decline from power, both because he had said what he most wanted to say and because alcoholism was sapping his powers. He died of the affects of drinking in 1962, but only after being recognized as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century if not of all time.

Major Works The Sound and the Fury (1929) As I Lay Dying (1930) Sanctuary (1931) Light in August (1932) Absalom, Absalom! (1936) Go Down, Moses (1942) The Hamlet (1940) The Town (1957) The Mansion (1959) Many short stories and some early poetry, some screenplays

Themes Southern decay race relations, the guilt of the south, time and its effects on the present and future, the psyche of the sensitive artist type

Techniques Stream-of-consciousness; first person inner monologues, sometimes of insane or mentally handicapped narrators; very long complex sentence structure with little punctuation

Terms Stream-of-consciousness (SOC)--a style of writing in which the author tries to mirror the workings of the human mind, in all its complexity. SOC writing often has mixed up chronology, jumping from event to event with little or no warning. These jumps are meant to convey ideas moving through the mind like atoms in space--random and rather chaotic. Reading SOC writing, then, poses great challenges for the reader.

As I Lay Dying was published in 1930, immediately following the work that many consider to be Faulkner's masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury. The Sound and the Fury is widely considered to be among the greatest of the modernist novels, and is hailed as a masterpiece of 20th century literature. In both of these novels, Faulkner built on a tradition begun by modernist authors like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Faulkner used stream-of-consciousness narrative to explore perception and thought as the basis of experience. Objective reality does not exist in As I Lay Dying; we have only the highly subjective interior monologues of fifteen different narrators. Darl, who emerges early as the novel's most important narrator, is eloquent but considered strange by his family and neighbors. He ends up being put into an asylum, with his older brother Cash musing on the definition of "insane." Evaluating "truth" becomes an equally tricky enterprise, with Faulkner depicting a truth as mutable and violent as the river the Bundrens cross midway through the novel. The structure of As I Lay Dying is powerful and innovative. Fifteen narrators alternate, delivering interior monologues with varying degrees of coherence and emotional intensity. The language is intense and highly subjective, with a recognizable change in language depending on the narrator. Each section falls somewhere in the range from confessional to stream-of-consciousness. The novel is a series of interior monologues, and through these fragmented passages we piece together the story of Addie Bundren's death and the transport of her body to Jefferson. The narrative appears fragmentary, but the story demonstrates admirable unity: it is limited to the span of a few days, and the different sub-plots are logically and skillfully interwoven. Faulkner's innovation is in how we see this unified set of events: we are forced to look at the story from a number of different perspectives, each of which is highly subjective. In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner made use of some elements of this technique. However, As I Lay Dying presents us with a far greater range of voices. Additionally, The Sound and the Fury provides a clearer distinction between unreliable and reliable narrators. Part Three of The Sound and the Fury is narrated by a man who is unmistakably evil, and Part Four helps clarify the novel through its use of a more objective third-person narrator. The voices in As I Lay Dying are more numerous and more ambiguous. Among Faulkner's achievements, in this novel and elsewhere, was the rendering of the vernacular of the South into poetic literary language. The Bundrens live in Faulkner's fictional community of Yoknapatawpha County, a setting used in many of his novels, and they are among the poorest characters in all of Faulkner's work. And yet Darl is one of Faulkner's most articulate and poetic creations. His destruction has a tragic depth and dignity. Faulkner depicts the besieged and impoverished Bundrens with empathy and grace, although he never romanticizes them, nor does he shy away from depicting their ignorance and failings. His depiction here of poverty and rural people is among the most rich and layered portraits in all of literature.

Darl Bundren: One of the fifteen narrators. The second oldest son of the Bundren family. Darl is the first and most important narrator of the novel. He is sensitive, intuitive, and intelligent, and his monologues are some of the most eloquent; they are also a more intricate representation of the process of thought. Some of the interior monologues are fairly straightforward, but Darl's passages are stream-of-consciousness narrative. For much of the novel, he acts as a kind of narrative anchor. One of the challenges of the novel is the complete absence of an objective third-person narrator. Everything we know about these characters is told to us through the lens of a subjective speaker; because of Darl's sensitivity and isolation from the other characters, most readers come to rely heavily on his version of events. He is eloquent, intelligent, and isolated. He ends up being put in an asylum.

Vardaman Bundren: One of the fifteen narrators. The youngest son of the family, and the second most frequently used narrator of the novel. Vardaman seems to teeter on the brink of mental collapse early on. His mother's death is extremely traumatizing, and his sensitive and imaginative nature is thrown out of balance by the event. He is at an age where he is becoming conscious of his status as a country boy (as opposed to a town boy), and he wonders why it should be so. He has a special bond with Darl.

Addie Bundren: One of the fifteen narrators. Mother of the family. Gravely ill at the start of the novel, she dies early on. She has always wanted to be buried among her birth family in Jefferson. Once a schoolteacher, she married Anse and gave birth to four children by him: Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. She also had a secret affair with Whitfield, resulting in the birth of Jewel. The transport of her body is the main event of the novel.

Anse Bundren: One of the fifteen narrators. Patriarch. Anse is maddeningly stupid and lazy. He unimaginatively applies himself to his wife's wish, but the physical and mental cost to his family is tremendous. He is a begrudging father, without real love or concern for his children. There is nothing overtly hostile about him; mostly he comes off as a weak and irritating man, but his decisions cause real harm throughout the book.

Cash Bundren: One of the fifteen narrators. Oldest son of the Bundren family. Cash is a carpenter, and his identity is wrapped up in his work. Although his monologues are few in number and unrevealing for most of the novel, his voice comes to dominate the closing events. He lacks Darl's sublime imagination and sensitivity, but he is nonetheless a relatively compassionate and trustworthy narrator.

Jewel: One of the fifteen narrators. Middle child of the Bundrens. Secretly, he is the illegitimate child of the minister Whitfield. Jewel is a fiery and physical being. He is hot-tempered and impatient. He loves horses and is physically powerful.

Dewey Dell: One of the fifteen narrators. Only daughter of the Bundren family, and the second youngest child. Dewey Dell's monologues are characterized by unarticulated wishes, powerful but poorly misunderstood emotions, and fatigue. She is pregnant and is secretly seeking an abortion.

Vernon Tull: One of the fifteen narrators. A neighboring, wealthier farmer. Tull is often frustrated by Anse's laziness. He has helped Anse a great deal over the years, and his family helps the Bundrens during and after Addie's death.

Cora Tull: One of the fifteen narrators. Vernon's extremely religious wife. Cora has a special love for Darl, whom she recognizes as special. Often, her religious beliefs make her an extremely judgmental person.

Eula Tull: Daughter of Vernon and Cora.

Kate Tull: Daughter of Vernon and Cora. She predicts that Anse will have a new wife soon if Addie dies.

Peabody: One of the fifteen narrators. The doctor of the county. He is elderly and overweight, but he continues to work. Anse's stupidity maddens him. He tends to Addie and later to Cash.

Samson: One of the fifteen narrators. Local farmer. He puts up the Bundrens on the first night of their journey.

Whitfield: One of the fifteen narrators. Local minister. Father of Jewel. Years ago, he had a secret affair with Addie.

Armstid: One of the fifteen narrators. Farmer who puts up the Bundrens for several nights.

Gillespie: Farmer who puts up the Bundrens for a night. Darl burns his barn down.

Isolation: Faulkner's structure is particularly suitable for the theme of isolation. The characters exist within their own series of interior monologues; we encounter each character, alone with their secret longings and fears. With many characters, we are struck by their loneliness. Darl's isolation is the most poetic and the most tragic. He is a powerfully intuitive observer, but his sensitivity and brilliance often isolate from others. He views his siblings with a paradoxically mixed attitude swerving from empathy and loyalty to supreme and insensitive detachment. Many characters resent Darl because of how he encroaches on their isolation: Dewey Dell hates Darl for making her feel vulnerable, and Jewel lashes out at Darl for seeing the truth about him.

The Physical: The novel dwells on the realities of land, nature, and physical processes. One does not feel detached from nature, with all of its power and nastiness. The land and the difficulty of earning a living from it, as well as the power of the flooded river, reveal men as being part of an often hostile environment. Nature's belligerence is seen in our very bodies. The sanitized version of death favored by Whitfield is used only as a foil for the much nastier reality faced by the Bundrens. The stinking corpse and the ever present buzzards present a vision of death at its most repulsive and physical.

Work: Work is a recurring theme of the novel, most often connected to Cash. Cash is a man whose work gives him an identity; we hear the sound of his saw before we see him, and in all of the characters monologues Cash is inseparable from his work as a carpenter. Work plays itself out in another way with Anse, whose laziness and stupidity, along with his whining and self-pity, earn the reader's unqualified contempt.

Poverty: The Bundrens are among the poorest characters in all of Faulkner's work. This poverty imposes harsh limits on them. It makes them dependent on their neighbors, and resentful of that dependence; often, the Bundrens display a pathetic mixture of dependency and pride. Their poverty also makes life so harsh that little time can be allotted for grief, or healing. Pain is concealed, and the work of everyday life goes on.

Religion: Many character muse about God and man throughout the novel. Faulkner tends to be rather critical of simplistic Christianity. The minister Whitfield is revealed as a self-satisfied hypocrite, hiding his transgression with Addie yet maintaining that he has wrestled with the devil and won. Cora's piety also grows increasingly annoying, especially when it becomes clear that she ignores any fact or event that contradicts her pre-established beliefs.

Duty: Obligation is an important theme of the novel. The family is bringing Addie's body to Jefferson, to bury her as she wished to be buried. There is much talk about duty. Addie herself speaks of duty regarding her relationship to Anse; to hear her speak of it, duty is a joyless but necessary part of life. Anse, too, constantly speaks of his duty to Addie, and the need to bury the body where she wished it to be buried. But duty seems somewhat fragile. Anse takes up with a new woman less than two weeks after Addie's death. And in terms of duty, the ties within the Bundren family fray rather quickly when it comes time to turn in Darl.

Being: Both Vardaman and Darl are taken by questions of being, consciousness, and identity. His mother's death has only added confusion to these questions; Vardaman cannot understand how something that "is" can become "was." Darl's musings veer between striking eloquence and a kind of elegant crudeness. Darl engages in intense sessions of questioning, in which he examines the foundations of being and consciousness. These questions take on a tragic significance when Darl loses his mind, and his concept of himself is completely undermined.

(Vahid NAB's Library)