Characters and Narrative in William Faulkner’s as I Lay Dying

Abstract

The paper examines narrative techniques utilised in William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying (1930). The study starts with analysing each of the internal narrative voices of the Bundren family: Addie, Anse, Darl, Jewell, Cash, Dewey Dell, Vardaman, and continues with the external narratives of non-Bundren narrators. The paper aims to analyze stream of consciousness, interior monologues and multiple points of views of its modernist narrative. The analysis arrives at the conclusion that whereas none of the narrators can be deemed fully reliable, their subjective accounts function as a composite framework through which multiple interpretations of the narrative. These narrative strategies displace epistemological authority, requiring the reader to actively engage with the text to reconstruct coherence from its fragmented and often contradictory perspectives. Fragmentation of the narrative multiple voices create a unique narrative style, which is different from the traditional one and has set up a milestone in American and world literature.