“As I Lay Dying” by W. Faulkner – The Death of God (F. Nietzsche), The Death of Author (R. Barthes)

A commentary giving an account of the social issues that concern writers in a range of twentieth-century texts.

 

 

In a range of texts in the twentieth-century literature, Modernism and Postmodernism were the two terms of literary tendencies that reflected various aspects of social issues. The literary modernism was a real surge right at the turn of the century, thus most of the writer’s works considered many transitional elements and returned to the social realism.

While the postmodern movement expressed different forms of civil rights movement as the war came to an end, and the author focused on literary construction based on moral society. I would like to pay my attention to a work related to the modern period since it gives a sense of internal feeling to human beings within many uncertainties of life after the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the wartime. Especially the influence and the legacy of the ideology of “The Death of God” by Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Death of Author” by Ronald Barthes and the concept of “Metempsychosis” by James Joyce make this work great in both figurative and literal sense – As I Lay Dying (1930) written by William Faulkner.

Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher

Having read As I Lay Dying, it can seem that a fictional story implicates a journey of complex family relationships, which reflect the existential metaphysics in daily life. The journey of those who live in a chaotic society with the decline of religion and seeking the meaning of life without God, in other words, each individual finds their own ways of connection to life.

The story is a lesson about the perceptive issues of personality so that people will be able to recognize and access the valuable truth of life with one another beyond any sort of materialistic ideas and to know what the existence actually means to life; and whether its paranormal phenomena can connect our thoughts to step over an ordinary life.

Specifically, in the story, Addie Bundren is perhaps considered as an important key character in the novel while her death embodies many meaningful interpretations. Her afterlife images are evoked by many incidents along the way of the story’s journey, which is integrated via a drilled hole on her coffin by Vardaman, the noise as a kind of mystical language from the coffin, or even when she is thought as a fish and a horse.

Hence, I believe that this kind of imaginary concept intersects the transformation form of soul and reflects a sort of belief, which creates a new form of life situation for Addie to live among people on being existence. What is more, that is the situation of the barn fire and the river-crossing scene. The two imageries symbolize for the death and the existence, which conflict the analysis to the centre of the novel. From the imagery of the fire an outbreak of perception which I concern it make a manifestation of rational perception in Darl, who was in doubt of creating the barn fire while the water voyage symbolizes a transitional figure which depicts Addie’s death just a physical thing and she still exists in a spiritual form of creation.

Seemingly it is the moment that he recognizes how worth his comprehension of the real truth of existence is but due to the situation of uncertainty and his action turned out madness, he lied on his mother coffin then cried. Whereas, Anse cared his false teeth and his new wife, Dewell Dell sought salvation for her abortion and Cash paid too much his attention to attain a meticulous coffin. The whole adventure to the “land of the dead” (Addie’s ancestor’s hometown) turned to be odd.

At this stage, I learn that the constructing characters so that readers can see the inwardness of one another then access the true meaning of life worth working by the author.

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As a result, the lesson of As I Lay Dying brings an illustration of what individual existence actually means to have a meaningful life. Many ordinary materialisms can hold back our vision about the true meaning of life. The journey of the Bundren family exemplifies a life adventure which people will face up with. The story marks more concern to our existence that it carries much philosophical thought rather than any of meaningless material goals.