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Literature on the bevel: The politics and aesthetics of Modernism in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
Winner, Upper Undergraduate Humanities
Author: Gabriel MacAdam
In “The Ideology of Modernism,” György Lukács defines modernist literature as “anti-realism” (395). For Lukács, the anti-realism of modernist writing is based on the modernist ontological view of humanity that depicts humans in their solitariness and thus solely through their mind and the framework of psychopathology. Lukács argues that modernist ideologies examine the human condition and challenge the existence of humanity through “an escape into nothingness,” which offers a foundationally nihilistic and anti-capitalist political view of the world (402). The politics of modernism, as outlined by Lukács, are rooted in the content of modernist literature and therefore shape the formal characteristics of a text by expressing nihilism and anti-capitalism. As Lukács tells us, “content determines form”; in other words, the aesthetic presentation and textual design directly relates to its intended purpose (396). This particular view of modernism suggests that ideology is the formative principle that underlies style, and, therefore, stylistic technique is dependent upon content. A productive example of this tension between content and form in modernist writing can be found in William Faulkner’s modernist text, As I Lay Dying (1930). In this essay I argue that Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying implements a stream-of-consciousness narrative technique and experimental writing to enrich the political ideas of modernism as set out by Lukács. While As I Lay Dying is ideologically consistent with Lukács’ views, Faulkner nonetheless demonstrates how the ‘ideology of modernism’ contributes to the distinctive realism of modernist writing owing to its unconventional formal characteristics.
Lukács refers to Heidegger’s definition of the solitariness of humans as ‘thrown into being,’ suggesting that humans are asocial beings “strictly confined within the limits of [their] own experience” (397). The concept of “man thrown into being” presents itself in the plot of As I Lay Dying by ‘throwing’ the reader into the midst of Addie’s death, as indicated by the title. The character Addie is the matriarch of the Bundren family, whose death sparks the Bundren’s odyssey into the city. In this case, Addie’s death is a literary device used to challenge the existence of humanity, which is summarized by the Bundren’s neighbour, Mr. Tull: “The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town” (Faulkner 44). Faulkner emphasizes the limitations of the individual’s human experience, as suggested by Lukács, by using a stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, which attempts to resemble the thoughts and feelings that occur in one’s mind. This modernist narrative style divides As I Lay Dying into segments of each character’s point of view with various contrasting perspectives. According to Lukács, “the lack of a consistent view of human nature” displayed by Faulkner’s alternating stream-of-consciousness offers the “attenuation” of reality (400).
On this note, Lukács refers to the stream-of-consciousness as a product of narrative subjectivity, through which reality is presented, distorting objective reality (399-400). In this manner, As I Lay Dying asserts a metaphysical form of nihilism through the aesthetics of the stream-of-consciousness given that “the dialect between individual subjectivity and objective reality” is invalidated (Lukács 400). Therefore, reality has no consistent frame of reference, which is shown when the character, Darl, confirms that reality is subject to perspective and external cues: “I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours” (80). Reality in this sense is arbitrary and leads Darl to contemplate his existence: “I don’t know if I am or not” (80). In Ian Watt’s “Realism and the Novel Form,” he argues that “the novel’s realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents, but the way it presents it,” suggesting that realism is a product of narrative style (464). In the case of As I Lay Dying, the stream-of-consciousness is as much the source of the novel’s modernism as it is its realism and conveys that the solitariness of each individual human is a communal experience. This depiction of humanity is fundamentally nihilist given its claims that life is meaningless, and that ‘man’ is unable to establish external meaningful relationships. For instance, in Addie’s conscious state of death she recalls her father telling her that “the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time,” implying that legacy is of greater significance than life itself (169). Addie remembers externalizing this notion and insinuates that her existence was dependent upon her student’s recollection of her through a shared experience of punishment: “only through the blows of my switch could their blood and my blood flow as one stream” (172). Addie’s students and other relationships were only relevant to her since they confirmed her existence and offered immortality in their memory.
While Faulkner’s use of the stream-of-consciousness examines the human condition, it also invokes a political position. As James Harding argues, “politics doesn’t structure form, politics is form” (41). Indeed, the aesthetics of the stream-of-consciousness supports the anti-capitalist sentiment found in As I Lay Dying owing to modernism’s “obsession with the psychopathology,” which Lukács describes as an “escape from the reality of capitalism” (406). This aesthetic enriches modernism’s anti-capitalist view that capitalism interferes with the solitariness of ‘man’ or as Addie puts it, her aloneness “had never been violated until Cash [Addie’s eldest son] came” (172). In the same way, the patriarch of the Bundren family, Anse, rejects roads and capitalism’s technological advancements because they violate his solitary lifestyle: “Putting it where every bad luck prowling can find it and come straight to my door, charging me taxes on top of it” (36). The politics that underlie this narrative style are anti-hierarchical and protest capitalism by giving a voice to the working class through a demotic yet progressively eloquent vernacular. This political ideology is evident in As I Lay Dying through the working classes as they experience the acute failures of capitalism. As the character, Cora Tull, poignantly laments after exhausting her ingredients on a cake order that is later rejected: “But those rich town ladies can change their minds. Poor folks can’t” (7). This incident demonstrates that the wealth gap between the upper class and the lower class is as drastic as the privilege of changing one’s mind during a transaction without consequence. Faulkner also parodies materialism in society when Cash, ironically, reasons Darl’s admittance into an insane asylum for burning the Gillespie’s barn: “I don’t reckon nothing excuses setting fire to a man’s barn and endangering his stock and destroying his property” (233).
Faulkner utilizes the Bundrens as a dystopian family symbolic of the capitalist society they live in, which is demonstrated by the parallels between Anse’s exploitation of his family and the mistreatment of the working class. For example, Anse trades Jewel’s horse for a new team of mules and takes Dewey Dell’s abortion money. Other examples include Anse’s lack of work or “lack of sweat” compared to the contributions made by the rest of the family toward burying Addie in Jefferson (32). These familial contributions include Cash building Addie’s coffin and sacrificing his leg and Jewel risking his life to retrieve Addie’s corpse on several occasions. When Anse returns to the Bundrens with a set of dentures, the failures of the Bundren hierarchy become clear given that Anse has exploited his family and prioritized his desires over the Bundren’s necessities: “He got them teeth” (260). Anse’s new set of teeth not only replaces the purpose of the Bundren’s journey to Jefferson but nullifies Anse’s children’s sacrifices, which demonstrates existential nihilism because the outcome of the Bundren’s odyssey places greater importance on dentures than their mother’s burial. Moreover, existential nihilism is shown when Anse introduces the new “Mrs. Bundren,” proposing that ‘man’ is expendable and easily replaceable (261).
In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner uses experimental writing to accentuate the underlying politics of modernism by resisting the traditional use of prose. For instance, Faulkner implements an innovative experimental writing style caught between prose and poetry that resembles social dialect, the sense perceptions, and trains of thought. This experimental writing style creates a variation in articulation between characters to contrast age, intelligence and personality. For example, the “Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. of the adze,” is not only onomatopoetic but also mimics the timing of Cash’s adze through aesthetics owing to the spacing of the ‘chuck’ sound. Another instance of experimental writing includes italics. Traditionally italics is used to distinguish significant words. However, the use of italics in As I Lay Dying reoccurs during multiple stream-of-consciousness moments as a means to represent thoughts in the back of a characters mind: “I saw Vardaman rise and go to the window and strike the knife into the fish…He’ll do as I say. He always does” (121). Specifically, italics highlight Darl’s “queer” nature by creating an omniscient perspective through his stream-of-consciousness. In this case, italics represent Darl in the present moment contrasting the fluctuation between incidents: “Jewel, I say, she is dead” (52). This emphasizes Darl’s clairvoyance given that although Darl and Jewel are not present during Addie’s death, Darl is able to visualize it in detail.
The aesthetics of experimental writing are used by Faulkner to reinforce the idea that the formal characteristics of a text augment its function and underlying politics. In particular, the use of repetition and punctuation throughout As I Lay Dying strengthens the train of thought and state of consciousness of the characters. When Cash breaks his leg, he repeatedly complains that “it [the coffin] wasn’t on a balance” and does not finish his sentence with a period (165). This lack of punctuation is indicative of Cash going in and out of consciousness while the repetition represents the central thought. In Ted Atkinson’s “Form and Function in As I Lay Dying,” he claims that Faulkner comments on the significance and subjectivity of form when Addie is placed inside the coffin reversed to not crush her dress (21). Cash expresses concern due to the misuse and misinterpretation of the coffin’s form, which harms its function: “I made it to balance with her. I made it to her measure and weight” (90). Consequently, the coffin’s constant state of imbalance impedes the Bundren family’s journey to Jefferson, which Atkinson states is symbolic of the philosophical debate regarding the aesthetics and formal criteria of “the modernist text it inhabits” (21). For this reason, Faulkner suggests that the aesthetics and formal characteristics in As I Lay Dying enrich the function of the text in the same way as Addie’s coffin.
The aesthetics of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying speaks to the politics of modernism, as outlined by Lukács, by adhering to modernism’s ontological depiction of humanity. Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness narrative technique and distinctive experimental writing style further attest to this depiction of humanity. The political ideologies underlying the modernist aesthetics of the novel promote nihilism and anti-capitalism because they support the solitariness of ‘man’ and according to Lukács, offer an escape from the distorted “life under capitalism” (404). These political ideologies are mediated by the pathological Bundrens through the use of the streams-of-consciousness, which communicates the asocial nature of humanity and socioeconomic issues of class. Faulkner’s experimental writing draws attention to the underlying politics of modernism by challenging traditional writing. The politics of modernism are clear in As I Lay Dying because Faulkner’s narrative style and experimental writing are in agreement with the nihilist and anti-capitalist views rooted in the content of the novel. With these modern aesthetics in alignment with the politics of modernism, Faulkner constructs As I Lay Dying on the bevel in order to complexify and extend the politics of modernism.
Works Cited
Atkinson, Ted. “The Ideology of Autonomy: Form and Function in As I Lay Dying.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 21 no. 1, 2005, pp. 15-27. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/fau.2005.0001.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Vintage International, 1990.
Harding, James. “Sweating on the Small Stuff: The Materiality of Form in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 30 no. 2, 2016, pp.41-67. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/fau.2016.0002.
Lukács, György. “The Ideology of Modernism,” The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1900-2000, edited by Dorothy J. Hale, Blackwell, 2006, pp. 394-412.
Watt, Ian. “Realism and the Novel Form,” The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1900-2000, edited by Dorothy J. Hale, Blackwell, 2006, pp. 462-480.