Vy Nguyen
Mrs. Scott
AP English Literature and Composition
4 May 2018
A Psychoanalysis of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
Introduction
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a southern gothic American classic, sparked the interest of critics when it was first published in 1930. Faulkner brought an avante garde style to literature through his fifteen different narrators, each of them either a Bundren family member, a neighbor, or a mere acquaintance. The Bundren family consists of five children, roughly ranging around the ages of twenty-five and seven. The Bundrens lived in Faulkner’s fabricated county “Yoknapatawpha,” which he based off of his own home Lafayette County, Mississippi. The novel revolves around the Bundrens journey fulfill the unforgiving wish of their mother, Addie Bundren, to be buried in Jefferson County. All family members narrated Addie’s death with striking emotions—some with deep despair, some relieved, some vicious, and some anxious. Before discussing these emotions, we must delve into why it is appropriate to psychoanalyze As I Lay Dying in the first place. Psychologically, the novel is rich in depth simply from Faulkner’s choice in stream-of-consciousness narration. Rather than the typical story tailoring the narration to the readers with explicit descriptions, Faulkner instead forces readers to interpret the story through the raw, unprocessed thoughts of the characters as if we had experienced their thought flow ourselves. Sigmund Freud, a well-known figure in psychology and the “father of psychoanalysis,” lived relative to Faulkner’s time as well. Though we cannot directly confirm that Faulkner purposefully included Freudian ideas, we can at least discuss the parallels between the two people. Freud believed in psychoanalysis, the study of the unconscious mind, and stressed that “the unconscious mind governs behavior to a greater degree than people suspect. Indeed, the goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious” (McLeod). Forcing attention to the unconscious mind (the ego) is precisely what Faulkner does through stream-of-consciousness narration. The answer to why he chooses to do so is to argue that all humans are inherently selfish, yet the drive towards that selfishness is different for everyone. Regardless of the differences of every individual, all humans tend towards selfishness; Faulkner articulates the ego’s innate selfishness with his purposeful psychological depth behind each character and their stream-of-consciousness narration.
II. Scholarly Article
Liam Butchart asserts that psychoanalyzing each family member’s reaction to Addie’s death with Freudian ideas of defense mechanisms reveals their innate selfishness. He begins by analyzing Cash, the oldest child. Denouncing Cash as selfish or selfless is a complex matter because his narrations cannot explicitly reveal his ego. However, Butchart feels that psychoanalyzing Cash’s relationship with his mother and his siblings can give insight into his ego. Being the oldest child, he was born before Addie realized that Anse did not love her and vice versa. Addie’s femininity and role in marriage were still secure, therefore she loved Cash with no hindrances, making their mother-son relationship stable unlike the rest of the family members. Cash is only seen working on the coffin by the other narrators, even through extreme weather, and he is deemed unemotional and uncaring for Addie because of this. Even in his narrations, he never thinks about Addie. The coffin serves as part of Cash’s defense mechanism to help him cope with Addie’s death. Everyone’s unconscious mind uses defense mechanisms as protection when dealing with various extremities of emotions. Cash specifically has a tendency to utilize sublimation and displacement—the first being wherein the individual channels unwanted emotions and socially unacceptable emotions (aggression, mourning, etc.) through a “substitute object in a socially acceptable way” (McLeod), and the latter being wherein the individual takes out negative emotions caused by one thing on someone or something less threatening. The coffin acts as part of his sublimation: he is grieving over Addie’s death by dedicating his time and efforts to building a coffin for her—something to help deal with his loss while at the same time do something productive for society. As Butchart says, “Before Addie’s death, Cash defined himself by his work, not by his mother; thus, when she is gone, he is able to handle the loss and move forward in his life.” Butchart uses the scene where the Bundrens cross a river on the way to Jefferson to justify his sublimation: “When Addie’s coffin falls into the river, Cash thinks, “It wasn’t on a balance. I told them that if they wanted to tote and ride it on a balance, they would have to” (Faulkner 165). Cash sublimes his anger and grief over Addie’s death by blaming his family members for their haphazard care for the coffin. Cash may not seem outwardly selfish with his devotion for his mother with her coffin and his healthy mourning, but we will discuss later how defense mechanisms in it itself reveals selfishness.
The child after Cash is Darl, who readers have deemed the “protagonist” because he narrates the most sections. Now, Addie has realized her diminishing femininity and marriage, thus not giving Darl the love he wanted, which created an unstable mother-son relationship. Butchart claims that his narcissism and weak self-identity derive from his relationship with Addie. Extremely obsessed with their relationship, Darl developed the defense mechanism rationalization, where the individual brings a favorable explanation to unfavorable behaviors, or to put simply, where he or she makes excuses. Butchart reasons that this defense is reflected in Darl burning the barn down, “the barn holds his decaying mother, so it seems to Darl that it is acceptable to burn it down…His ego is rationalizing, but the weakness of its explanation not only endangers the rest of the family, it fails to stave off his descent into madness.” Although uneffective, rationalization serves to reason with his extreme pain he feels towards Addie’s death.
Though Butchart does not clarify the selfishness of defense mechanisms, I agree with his assertion that Faulkner purposefully wrote disparate reactions to Addie’s death to capture humans’ egotistical lenses. Each of the Bundrens, like all humans, utilize defense mechanisms to attempt to deal with various pain through a self-centered approach. These mechanisms solely drive on the self-interest to get better or get rid of negative feelings, making them selfish. Butchart describes the Bundrens’ selfish reactions to Addie’s death as “different shades of self-centeredness,” and Faulkner displaying these different shades effectively renders the distinct traits each individual carries, to altogether unite humans under the state of selfishness.
III. Style
As discussed earlier, Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness narration renders each character’s true psyche, in which through that we can discover their selfishness. Every aspect of his style is avant garde; the story is narrated in a stream of consciousness, each narrator’s thoughts are subjective, and it is narrated in an unchronological order. His intention behind this is to bring together the reality of an unprocessed human mind. A human’s thoughts are extremely disorderly and chaotic and perceives everything differently from others through a self-centered lens. This type of narration is a deep illustration of this: Faulkner takes the reader through the ego and their conscious mind to expose the full range of thought of each character. Here, a prime example of Dewey Dell’s consciousness through her narration is given:
I heard my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had. It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon. It’s not that I wouldn’t and will not it’s that it is too soon too soon too soon.
Now it begins to say it. New Hope three miles. New Hope three miles. That’s what they mean by the womb to time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events…
The land runs out of Darl’s eyes; they swim to pin points. They begin at my feet and rise along my body to my face, and then my dress is gone: I sit naked on the seat above the unhurrying mules, above the travail. Suppose I tell him to turn. He will do what I say. Dont you know he will do what I say? Once I waked with a black void rushing under me. I could not see. He’ll do as I say. He always does. I can persuade him to anything. You know I can. Suppose I say Turn here. That was when I died that time. Suppose I do. We’ll go to New Hope. We wont have to go to town. I rose and took the knife from the streaming fish still hissing and I killed Darl.
When I used to sleep with Vardaman I had a nightmare once I thought I was awake but I couldn’t see and couldn’t feel I couldn’t feel the bed under me and I couldn’t think what I was I couldn’t think of my name I couldn’t even think I am a girl I couldn’t even think I nor even think I want to wake up nor remember what was opposite to awake… (121)
Like the human mind, Dewey Dell’s takes abrupt shifts in moods: in this passage alone, she remembers her mother’s death, murders her brother, then remembers a dream. She singlehandedly depicts the active human mind with these shifts, and we can psychoanalyze her thought flow to better understand her ego. The first shift that appears is going from remembering Addie’s death to seeing the “New Hope three miles” sign on the way to Jefferson. She remembers that Addie is dead, wishing she did not have to deal with her dilemma and “had enough time” to fully process her death. Immediately, her thoughts turn away from Addie and back to the present, even though there is little importance in seeing the New Hope sign; this reveals her ego refocusing back to herself. The second transition from imagining killing Darl to remembering her dream about her sexuality uncovers her impending insecurities. With her sudden pregnancy, her thoughts flooded with anxiety regarding her femininity and sexuality, causing her to dream about questioning them. Her ego is so deeply caught up in her dilemma that she continuously goes back to worrying about it, and therefore is unable to mourn her mother’s death. She despises the fact that someone knows her insecurities in her sexuality, she feels so strongly about it that she even consciously thinks of killing Darl with a knife. Again, her mind returns back to her dilemma. Faulkner intently shifts his writing style to rambly and repetitive solely in Dewey Dell’s narrations. Here, she does this when thinking about Darl, “He’ll do what I say. He always does. I can persuade him to anything. You know I can.” Though the diction is simple, her repetitive words are powerful; they are her mind’s way of reassuring herself that no one else will find out about her pregnancy, revealing her deep anxieties in her dilemma. Compared to the rest of the Bundrens, Dewey Dell is deemed the most self-centered out of all of them due to her apathetic reaction to Addie’s death—completely caused by distractions by her pregnancy.
IV. Conclusion
Although it is an externally typical novel, critics praise As I Lay Dying for its utter obscurity in its approach to uncover the minds of the Bundren family. Faulkner is experimental in narration and chronology, which transforms a run-of-the-mill story into a enigmatic and gripping classic—firmly leading modern literature with its presence. Faulkner’s characters represent the entirety of mankind, through threading timeless and universal themes into their stories. From greed, death, religion, marriage, feminism, to insanity, this novel illustrates human life in its rawest form. Viewing As I Lay Dying from a Freudian lens extrapolates immense emotions and human motivations with the use of defense mechanisms; these mechanisms render the ego’s selfish instincts to improve itself. His narration style reflects the experimental side of modern literature: the story is narrated in a stream of consciousness, there are fifteen distinct narrators, each narrator’s thoughts are subjective (some more than others, leaving the reader to mull over what the truth is), and it is narrated in an unchronological order. Faulkner’s use of stream-of-consciousness narration completely exposes these emotions and the character’s ego, making it a powerful and personal method of narration and the most effective for psychological depth. Behind this modern work unveils elements of selfishness. Using defense mechanisms, we can establish that the Bundrens’ diverse reactions to Addie’s death establishes their individuality, but their drive within their defense mechanism unifies them together as selfish beings. Through a psychoanalysis of the characters and their stream of consciousness, we can appropriate that Faulkner’s purpose behind embedding the ego into As I Lay Dying is to point out the innate tendencies of selfishness through distinctly different individuals.
V. Poem
The universal theme of human selfishness are hidden not only in basic human life, but other realms, such as government, as well. Popularized during the American Revolution, Thomas Hobbes’ Hobbesian Theory brought to light the true state of the human mind: selfish and greedy. Here, Franz Santil reflects the Hobbesian theory with his Thomas Hobbes-inspired poem:
“King Leviathan” by Franz Santil
Every part exist for a common reason:
the protection of the peace and the protection of our children,
so the head of the body must always stay sound,
and the body of the head must never unbound,
The head of the beast must never rest easy,
for the parts closest the neck will always be greedy,
and the part that are below the chest will aspire to rise,
so the head of the body must always be wise,
respectable, noble, and never is he wrong,
to feed the illusion that his will is still strong.
In Franz Santil’s poem “King Leviathan,” the speaker illustrates a beast and his strong desire to maintain power over his status. Santil’s poem and Hobbes’ book Leviathan carries parallels in diction—both using dehumanizing descriptors such as “beast” and “creature” to discuss human nature. The speaker describes the beast’s state of equilibrium as believing in greed for the good of the people; he drives on knowing that what he is doing is for the better, which is what the speaker refers to as the “illusion.” Santil believes that selfishness is what makes humans fierce, hence the beast feeds off of it so that “his will is still strong.” Humans obliviously live in this state of disillusionment, much like the beast does. Hobbes makes the American people aware of this state with his book Leviathan, where he claims that absolute monarchy was the most effective form of government because, as he asserts, “human beings are, at their core, selfish creatures.” This delineation umbrellas a few things: humans have an uncontrollable amount of greed and desire, and humans will be in “constant warfare” against each other while achieving that greed. These two works divulge the idea that humans have intractable selfish tendencies, so strong that these tendencies are considered beast-like.
Like Hobbes’ and Santil’s image of selfishness, Anse Bundren acts on what is morally and socially favored to egotistically enhance his persona. He flaunts his religion and his honorable fulfillment of his wife’s dying wish, only to accomplish his desire to perceive as a morally upright citizen. Contrasting to the prior images of selfishness, Dewey Dell showcases a human out of control with her emotions due to her selfishness. Hobbes’ placement versus Faulkner’s placement of Dewey Dell on the “self-interest spectrum” arises the varying aspects in selfishness. There are humans who are so self-centered that they cannot think of anything or anyone else—Dewey Dell—and at the same time there are humans who are so self-centered that they focus on others to gain a favorable persona—Anse. Like how each Bundren reacts to Addie’s death differently, humans all have their distinct egocentric philosophy that drives their conscious mind.
Works Cited
Butchart, Liam. “Death, Mourning and Human Selfishness: Faulkner's As I Lay Dying Through a Freudian Lens.” PsyArt: An Online Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts, psyartjournal.com/article/show/butchart-death_mourning_and_human_selfishness_fau.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Random House, 1964.
“King Leviathan(Inspired by Thomas Hobbes) by Frantz Saintil.” Hello Poetry, hellopoetry.com/poem/1497083/king-leviathaninspired-by-thomas-hobbes/.
Lloyd, Sharon A., and Susanne Sreedhar. “Hobbes's Moral and Political Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 30 Apr. 2018, plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/.
McLeod, Saul. “Saul McLeod.” Simply Psychology, Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html.
Mcleod, Saul. “Sigmund Freud.” Simply Psychology, Simply Psychology, www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html.
Obringer, Lee Ann. “How Dreams Work.” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 8 Mar. 2018, science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/dream1.htm.