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Faulkner’s use of metaphor in As I Lay Dying is very striking. “How do our lives ravel out into no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls” (Faulkner 207). The character Darl, especially, is given to metaphorical thought that makes the whole story seem epic when it is only a simple family journey. Whether intentional or not, Faulkner makes us consider if there are parallels to our own lives through his metaphors.

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“Get thee to a nunn’ry, why wouldst thou be a / breeder of sinners” (Shakespeare 3.1 120 – 121)?

“Get thee to a nunn’ry, why wouldst thou be a / breeder of sinners?” (Shakespeare 3.1 120 – 121).

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As Shakespeare says in Hamlet, it would be better for a woman to become a nun rather than marry a mad man (3.1, 120).

When Ophelia seeks to return Hamlet’s love letters, he reacts violently screaming for her to enter a convent (Shakespeare 3.1, 120).

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While Darl is sometimes the most disconcerting of our narrators, he is also the most poetic. Indeed, his poetry increases with his madness. He asserts, in one of his last moments of lucidity before his climactic break, “How do our lives ravel out into no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls” (Faulkner 207). What this means, and its pertinence to the plot, is debatable, but if nothing else, it reveals Darl’s perception of the world. He thinks not in the concrete, practical terms of Cash or the tactile confusion of Vardaman. He thinks in metaphor, broad picture, and psychological concept. He paints this family trip on the epic backdrop of universal truth.

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HAMLET: Ha, ha! Are you honest?

OPHELIA: My lord?

HAMLET: Are you fair?

OPHELIA: What means your lordship? (3.1 102 – 105)

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Vine Compilation

"You got me detective, I guess I'm going to liar's jail" (Cho 6:10 - 6:16).

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While it is a pity that Coleridge was never able to finish “Kubla Khan,” we can still appreciate the romantic vision as it stands. Even incomplete, the poem captured the imaginations of artists for decades after its publication in a way that it may never have done when completed. We see the artist at his best, wholly in his element, as he writes:

But oh that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! As holy and inchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover! (Coleridge 12 – 16)

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For Formatting:

Purdue Owl

Red Deer College Library

For Citations:

Citation Machine

EasyBib

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But aside from revealing the thinking of the cryptic and complex Darl, this comment asks us to reflect on the story and the bizarre events that led us here, just ten short pages before the fire. It is as if Darl knows this trip will claim his life and, in some ways, it does. He looks back on the death of his mother and the sordid road trip to bury her, that had nothing to do with burying her, and all he sees are “dead gestures of dolls” (Faulkner 207). This expedition has been a pantomime of grief. No one in the family is truly here to bury Addie Bundren, their gestures are as fake as a doll’s. Anse is here for profit, Dewey Dell is here for medical care, Cash is here to keep the family together, Jewel is here to part ways. Only Vardaman is mindlessly distraught by his mother’s loss, but more because it has destabilized his world and his family than because he had specific attachment to her. And Darl, Darl is here to piece it all together. Though he is not privy to the internal narratives of the other chapters, he nonetheless spends the whole trip thinking about the family’s relations to each other. And, ultimately, it is the fact that Jewel was more Addie’s son than he ever was, even though Jewel was illegitimate, that drives Darl mad and makes him start the fire. In this moment of reflection, you can hear Darl’s nihilism. Darl looked back and cast judgment on the Bundren family, including himself, and decided it should all end. And as the character who most informs the reader of what to think, he asks the audience, too, to cast judgment on the Bundren family and to find them wanting. In hindsight, this comment from Darl is foreshadowing of the end. In his own, cryptic, way, he told us that it was over, that he was going to end it, and how we should feel about it. Even mad, Darl is the most reliable narrator in the whole book.

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