A Hidden Flower: Why Darl is the Hero of As I Lay Dying

Darl Bundren, throughout the narrative of As I Lay Dying, serves as a kind of narrator and voice of God, to the degree that we find ourselves able to take his descriptions as almost matter of fact. In the context of the story that Darl plays a large part in conveying, he appears aloof and disillusioned, mocking the selfish motivations of his family members, even when they have serious consequences. In this blog post, I will investigate how examination of Darl’s choices and attention in narration might elucidate his own “hero’s journey.” 

Darl’s “call to adventure,” or awakening from the “ordinary world” seems to begin before the actual events of the novel, in the flashback where he recalls the incident of Jewel purchasing the horse. Darl’s position in the Bundren family within the flashback seems drastically different from his attitude while Addie lies on her deathbed. Jewel suffers from a strange affliction of chronic fatigue that initially seems worrisome to the rest of his family. Darl notes that “he would get up, but he wouldn’t hardly have half sense” and that “he would go to sleep at the supper table” and “at the cow” (Faulkner 129). The Bundren children, under the guidance of Addie, do their best to support Jewel. Darl describes how she “got Dewey Dell to do his milking” and “found some way for Dewey Dell and Vardaman” to do his jobs before supper (Faulkner 130). Addie would even do some of Jewel’s jobs in secret and “fix him special things to eat and hide them for him (Faulkner 130). Darl records that the family took such measures in secrecy in order to protect Jewel from Anse’s”jawing and complaining,” his selfish attitude that his family should do all of the work on their farm instead of him (Faulkner 129). The secrecy, of course, seems to trouble Addie: Darl notes that “she was hating herself for that deceit and hating Jewel because she had to love him so that he had to act the deceit” (Faulkner 130, 131). The Bundren family, however, remains willing to continue with the arrangement because of their concern for Jewel. After they catch him leaving the farm at night, Darl and Cash remain worried that Jewel might be putting himself in trouble by pursuing a relationship with a married woman, and when Jewel doesn’t even return one morning, Darl describes how the family worried, “‘Something has happened to him. We let something happen to him” (Faulkner 134). However, it turns out that Jewel has been cleaning Lon Quick’s grounds at night in order to buy a horse for himself. Jewel doesn’t seem to care what he’s put his family though to get what he wants, refusing to get back to the house and rest and saying, “I got to get me a saddle and bridle” (Faulkner 135). The scene’s not only an exhibition of Jewel’s selfishness but of Anse’s, who complains that Jewel had “Taken the work from your flesh and blood and bought a horse with it” (Faulkner 136). These displays of selfishness seem to take Darl out of the ordinary world, the illusion of a mutually supportive family, and into one of cynicism.

But I think another character’s selfishness also can be seen in Darl’s flashback, that of Addie Bundren. At the end of his chapter, Darl states, “I knew that I knew” something. We later learn that Darl is referring here to the fact that Jewel is the product of Addie’s affair with the minister Whitfield. But what might be the further significance of this realization? Well, we learn in Addie’s own account that she also has fundamentally selfish motivations. Addie desires to escape her own loneliness by forcing her presence on others, often through the use of violence. She describes how the most fulfilling aspect of teaching children for her was when she got the opportunity to beat them with a switch. “Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever,” she would think (Faulkner 170). Addie’s affair with the minister Whitfield was evidence of this. She says that “he [was] the more beautiful since the garment which he had exchanged for sin was sanctified" Faulkner 175). She enjoys the opportunity to force herself on his consciousness through the burden of an apparent sin. The quest that Addie gives to Anse would be her final attempt to force her family to acknowledge her, stating, “my revenge would be that he would never know I was taking revenge” (Faulkner 173). Addie also believes that it would be Jewel who would drive such a quest despite him frequently ignoring her. She tells Cora, “He will save me from the water and from the fire” despite his lack of care for Addie (Faulkner 168). When Darl has a realization about Jewel’s true paternity, it could very well be a realization about Addie’s selfishness as someone who desperately wants others to acknowledge her. Perhaps all of Addie’s service to Jewel really is a mechanism for making him feel guilty after her death. Darl observes that when Jewel saw Addie cry, “his face [was] growing a little cold and sick-looking” (Faulkner 135). Jewel’s journey to bury Addie does indeed seem driven by a selfish attempt to rid himself of the guilt he feels for neglecting her. In his one chapter, Jewel describes angry desires in the wake of Addie’s death: how he wishes he and Addie could be “picking up and rolling” rocks towards the faces of his family members who do not seem concerned enough with Addie’s death. In addition, the motif of his “sick-looking” face continues with Jewel having flesh “that smooth, thick, pale green of cow’s cud” as he ignores the commands of his family and almost singlehandly lifts Addie’s coffin into the wagon (Faulkner 96). Darl’s observation at the end of his flashback illustrates a shared selfish relationship between Addie and Jewel, where Addie desires to force her presence on him and Jewel is singularly focused on ridding himself of the guilt.

 

 

A magnifying glass might best signify Darl's narration early on in the narrative. He holds other character's up to detailed analysis but detaches their moral flaws from the surrounding context. 

If we’ve established that Darl’s flashback to Jewel’s covert purchase of the horse qualifies as a “call to adventure,” then he must subsequently embark on further development with this new revelation. Perhaps the “supernatural aid” that he uses in this phase of his journey could be his powerful insight that affords him almost omniscient knowledge of others’ thoughts and action. As Addie is on her deathbed, Darl exhibits such a degree of cynicism regarding his family members' actions that he considers them to be totally hopeless. Sometimes, his negative attitudes can be outright insensitive. As they embark upon their journey to make a delivery for Tull, Darl repeatedly taunts Jewel about their mother’s impending death, saying, “It’s not your horse that’s dead, Jewel” and pointing to the buzzards in the sky as they return to the Bundren home (Faulkner 94). He is, of course, mocking Jewel’s guilty fixation on Addie Bundren, but it still is morbid that he makes light of an apparently tragic event. In addition, Darl takes aim at Dewey Dell, telling her, “You want her [Addie] to die so you can go to town: is that it?” (Faulkner 40). As the family embarks on their journey, Dewey Dell fears that Darl will purposefully make them bury Addie in New Hope instead of going to town to spite her, “Suppose I tell him to turn. He will do what I say” she thinks (Faulkner 121). It also seems very strange that Darl would highlight Dewey Dell as an example of selfishness; she has a focus on going to Jefferson to get an abortion, but the patriarchal society around her, particularly the fact that Peabody would likely deny her treatment, forces her into such an outlook. Overall, Darl certainly has awakened to the underlying dynamics of selfishness in his family, but his outlook at this point remains so hopeless at to be destructive, as can be seen when he starts laughing as the family prepares for their trip to Jefferson

However, Darl’s attitude and willingness to question his family structure will undergo a shift in what I perceive to be his “belly of the whale” moment. As the Bundren family prepares to cross the river, Darl describes it as a moment of intense significance. He describes how it seems underneath “the thick dark current” lay “something huge and alive waked for a moment of lazy alertness out of and into light slumber again” (Faulkner 141). However, there’s also an aura of a foreboding threat, considering that they’re trying to ford a wild, flooded river. Darl describes the deforested region around the river as having a “spectral tracing [to] a monument to a still more profound desolation than this above which we now sit” (Faulkner 143). The Bundrens do indeed experience the terrible foreshadowed devastation as they make their attempt to cross the river. A massive log strikes their wagon: Cash clings to the wagon and gets knocked out while suffering a broken leg, and Jewel’s horse barely makes it to the other side of the river. What’s significant about the devastation resultant from crossing the river is that it was caused by the selfish motivations of the Bundrens themselves. Tull describes how Anse, with his inflated ego, “had believed all the the time that folks had been lying to him about [the bridge] being gone” but wanted it to be true, reacting with a sort of "pleased astonishment" (Faulkner 124). Anse, of course, uses his belief in divine providence to justify his self-interested actions, but the rest of the Bundrens feel willing to go along with his plan because they also feel anxious to go to Jefferson, whether it’s for a new toy train or to purge their guilt over their dead mother. The crossing of the river represent a “belly of the whale”moment for Darl in that he realizes that his family’s self-serving behaviors are actually harming them. Subsequently, he feels a need to guide and correct them. This shift can be seen in our most recent reading, when Darl burns down the barn to give Addie a “proper burial” after seeing how her desire to be present in the minds of her family after death led to her corpse being defiled and when he prevents the angry, guilt-stricken Jewel from getting into an altercation with a provocative passerby. But of course, Darl ends up captured by the authorities for such efforts. I think we’ll see in the final chapters of the novel what Faulkner intends to communicate with this transformation Darl has undergone.