Darl's Inverse Apotheosis And Why The Bundrens Are a Bunch Of Goofy Goobers

I think that Faulkner portrays the cast of “As I Lay Dying” as a bunch of goobers, because the entire story is almost like an inversion of the Hero’s Journey, instead of ascending from normal life into a state of enlightenment or self-fulfillment, or a finding of one’s identity like the stories of Siddhartha or Helga Crane, we see the Bundrens descend into a lower plane of existence, devolving into absurdity, or in Darl’s case, literal insanity. One thread of this overarching theme throughout the novel is Darl’s descent into madness. In the early chapters of the book, Darl’s POV tends to be very matter-of-fact, giving vivid imagery and descriptions of events; some of which he did not even attend. This semi-omniscience we see from Darl gives the impression that the is the “Narrator” of the story, whose thoughts would provide clarity among Faulkner’s often hard-to-read sections from other character’s POVs. In Darl’s 2nd chapter on pages 10-11, we see examples of his narrator-like descriptions of events. “Pa and Vernon are sitting on the back porch… I fling the dipper dregs to the ground and wipe my mouth on my sleeve.” Many of his early chapters are similarly clear, describe directly actions taken by characters and the events which occur; more or less similar in writing to other books.

However, as the book goes on, Darl becomes less and less clear, being written more like the other characters; he rambles a lot more and becomes generally more unintelligible. In one of his chapters towards the middle of the book, Darl says “Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know where he is or not”. Here, he contemplates consciousness and existence in a sort of “I think therefore I am” manner, and deduces that Jewel exists because he doesn’t bother to think about such things as his existence. In doing so, he himself contemplates his existence and thus doesn’t exist according to his conclusion. This shows how his character progressively become less and less intelligible as the book goes on, as the rest of that chapter is full of similar ponderings which don’t really make sense when you first read them, such as “...he is not what he is and he is what he is not.”

The final moment in Darl’s descent into madness, and in my opinion, one of the most striking images, is as Darl watches the scene unfold after he’s set the barn ablaze. The narrative tone of this chapter depersonalizes Darl’s perspective, turning him into a kind of 3rd person omniscient narrator. The chapter contains only vivid, factual descriptions of what’s going on, what people are saying, descriptions of the scene as Jewel rushes into the burning barn to save the animals, as Darl just stands and watches. This gives the reader an ominous vibe from Darl’s presence. Darl interjects with his opinion; “The sound of it has become quite peaceful once.” This coupled with him ominously standing watching the barn burn down was a really striking image for me, and it does a really good job of capturing how much of a psycho masochist Darl has become; the moment seems like a moment of apotheosis like when Siddhartha finally reaches enlightenment, but in an odd perversion of the hero’s journey, where Darl reaches “endarkenment” for lack of a better world, 

 I find it very interesting that we see Darl going crazy through his own eyes, the whole story feels like a fever dream as you’re reading it, and the vast majority of what we know about the characters is through Darl’s eyes and is thus distorted by his own biases and what he’s thinking. It’s even stranger that Darl can see through space and time and just know things omnisciently; perhaps you could hypothesize that none of the story happened and it’s all inside Darl’s head as he slowly loses his sanity