(The following is a condensation of the article “The Individual and the Family: Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying,” by James L. Roberts, which appeared in The Arizona Quarterly 16.1 (Spring 1960): 26-38, and is reprinted with permission.)
One key to a basic interpretation [of As I Lay Dying] lies in the relationship between the psychological motives for the journey to Jefferson and the attitude of the Bundrens toward Darl. The first problem is concerned not merely with the fulfillment of the promise made to dying Addie, but with both the reasons why Addie demands this promise and the reasons why her family defy fire and water to fulfill it.
Addie had always seen herself as being completely alone in the world. She sensed that her own father did not love her. Thus when he died, she had no kin left. When Anse came along, she was glad to escape from the loneliness of teaching school. She dismisses her courtship with the curt words: “So I took Anse.” Faulkner mentions no love or emotional understanding, just an acceptance and maybe not even an acceptance but a conditioning for death. For Addie all living had to be some type of preparation for death. She had felt alone so much during her life that her great desire was to make other people aware of her presence. And she felt that only through violence could she achieve her aims. She also felt that words are useless, and she soon comes to realize that Anse (and later preacher Whitfield) are just words.
Thus Addie built her life around violence. But she had failed to make her presence felt by other people. She finally came to the full realization that during her life she had also been only words; after death, she was determined that it should be otherwise. Consequently, feeling that she would attain reality only when she imposed herself upon the consciousness of others, she made them promise to carry her to Jefferson, forty miles away, to bury her.
The first problem of this novel is to understand why Addie makes Anse promise to carry her back to Jefferson. We discover early in the novel that she bore no love for her own family and, eventually, even hated her own father when she discovered the need for violence in order to achieve awareness. Thus we must assume that Addie made one more desperate effort to force an awareness of herself on her family. This difficult and arduous journey was to be her revenge on Anse, who had been only words, who had failed to help her achieve awareness, and who had never violated her aloneness. Addie even acknowledges that part of her revenge would be that Anse “would never know I was taking revenge.” Thus Addie’s request to be buried in Jefferson was made essentially for selfish reasons, in a last effort to prove that she was not just useless words.
For all Addie’s efforts to force an awareness of herself upon the consciousness of her family, she partly fails. Anse is quite content to carry out the promise—not because it is a promise and not because of his respect or awe for the dead. People of the Bundren type have seen death too often to view it as other than an event in everyday life. But, “God’s will be done . . . now I can get them teeth” is the extent of Anse’s feelings. He lives only in the world of ineffectual words. Without the outside help of Samson, Armstid, Tull, and Gillespie, Anse would never have made it to Jefferson. Even then he has to steal from his own children in order to replace destroyed equipment.
However, Anse makes sure that he does not steal so much that there won’t be more left to steal—for his teeth—when he gets to Jefferson. He must also rely on other people to get the grave dug since he didn’t bring a spade and refuses to buy one. When the water incident and the fire occur, Anse is always the bystander, commenting: “Was there ere a such unfortunate man,” thinking that all these events are just more crosses he must bear before he can get his teeth. The irony of the situation is that Anse is constantly indebted to others but refuses to recognize his obligation and excuses himself by his oft-repeated comment: “I ain’t beholden.”
With Dewey Dell, Vardaman, and Cash, Addie’s efforts to force an awareness of herself on her family again fail. Because of her pregnancy, Dewey Dell is interested only in getting to the druggist in town. Vardaman lives also in a vegetative world, and his is also a world of confusion. He is almost oblivious of his mother’s decaying body and looks forward only to seeing the toy train in the store window. Cash sees only one action at a time; therefore, his only concern is with each immediate action. Only upon Jewel and Darl is Addie’s presence deeply felt, and ironically these are the two whom she least wished to affect.
After the relationship between Addie and the rest of her family has been established, the next problem lies in Darl’s relationship to the Bundren family, and especially their attitudes toward him. Darl is always elusive, complicated, thought-provoking, poetic in stream-of-consciousness observations, and especially observant of details. It is through Darl’s eyes and observations that the reader gets a full perspective of the other characters.
Darl is the only character in the book who lives on several, interchangeable levels of consciousness. As a result of this perceptiveness, Darl is able to understand the feelings of others. Perceiving the relations between Jewel and Addie, he taunts Jewel about not having a father; and this taunt stems from Darl’s realization that, because of the circumstances of his own birth, he has no mother. Darl is able to comprehend Jewel’s inexpressible love for Addie and realizes that the emotions Jewel projects toward his horse substitute for his feelings toward his mother—hence, the accusation that Jewel’s mother is a horse.
Not only does Darl understand Jewel’s feelings for Addie, but he also realizes that Jewel is the “cross” that Addie bears. Consequently, Darl’s descriptions or observations of Jewel are full of symbolic, wooden imagery. Darl has penetrated Jewel’s inner consciousness and sees the motives behind each of Jewel’s actions. The tension mounts steadily between Darl and Jewel as Darl projects himself into the consciousness of Jewel and knows instinctively each of Jewel’s motivations, and yet refuses to act. The tension suddenly increases after Jewel sells his horse, and it culminates when, at the end, Jewel violently attacks Darl.
