Analysis Of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying From The Point Of Decay

Abstract

In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner tells a story of a family who undergoes a series of tragic events. In the course of the events, the physical decay of bodies and nature, reflects the decay in moral values of Bundren family and society. In this novel, everything starts and ends with a corpse: the dead body of family’s mother. According to Kristeva, the border is designated by a corpse which reminds everyone the bitter smell of death. In this article William Faulkner’s masterpiece As I Lay Dying has been analyzed from the point of decay.

Introduction

William Faulkner tells a story of corrupt family who have no affection for anybody other than themselves in As I Lay Dying. The decay of the Bundren family shows itself not only in terms of morality, but also physically. From the beginning till the end of the novel, almost each character of Bundrens experiences decay in different stages with unexampled ways. Throughout As I Lay Dying, the reader witnesses a long-term decay in morality and family relations. The loss, deprivation and deterioration constitute the main focuses of Faulkner. Yet, the decay does not end with ethical elements. The physical decay in As I Lay Dying indicates social-moral decay. So, it can be assumed that both deteriorating processes have parallelism with each other. Clifton P. Fadiman makes it clear as follows: Mr. Faulkner has a set of romantic obsessions which he treats in a highly intellectual manner. He is fascinated by characters who border on idiocy; by brother-and-sister incest; by lurid religious mania; by physical and mental decay; by peasants with weird streaks of poetry; by bodily suffering; by the more horrifying aspects of sex. Hence, Faulkner does not hesitate to use disgusting, disturbing elements in his works. While doing this, he reflects the rotten social relationships and corrupt personalities to his characters’ physical and visible wounds, injuries and decay. 

In his book, Disgust Winfried Menninghaus says: “The decaying corpse is therefore not only one among many other foul smelling and disfigured objects of disgust. Rather, it is the emblem of the menace that, in the case of disgust, meets with such a decisive defense, as measured by its extremely potent register on the scale of unpleasureable affects”. 

In a similar manner, it is seen that the Bundrens experience some kind of a merging on the way. Wherever they go, whatever they do, they always carry the corpse of Addie with them. Even when they rest, they do not want to get far away from the corpse. This situation justifies the idea of Kristeva. The abject (corpse), which is also a border, becomes a part of the self (Bundren family). Although they want to get away from the burden of it, they accept it as a part of the body, as if it is another living member of the family. After that moment, it becomes harder to differentiate the subject and abject from each other. 

Before becoming an abject for her family, Addie Bundren was a mother of five children. Throughout the novel she is dead, but the reader can face her realities by the help of her chapters. Addie does not live a happy life because of her husband. Until the end of her life, she endures him. Yet, there is an exception which changes her life drastically. She commits adultery with a local minister, Whitfield. This adultery strengthens her being of an abject. She gives birth to a natural child, Jewel. The abjection of Addie starts with her adultery and ends with her burial. Yet, at this point it is important to focus on the mental decay of her. As she does not respect Anse, she becomes numb to the family members. Moreover, she is thought to be not an ideal mother and wife: 'Don’t tell me,' I said. 'A woman’s place is with her husband and children, alive or dead. Would you expect me to want to go back to Alabama and leave you and the girls when my time comes, that I left of my own will to cast my lot with yours for better and worse, until death and after?' […] When I lay me down in the consciousness of my duty and reward I will be surrounded by loving faces, carrying the farewell kiss of each of my loved ones into my reward (Faulkner, 1990:14). 

Not being able to become a suitable wife to Anse drags her to committing adultery. That turning point of her not only brings a joy to her life, but also the true meaning of love. The bitter taste of adultery and the juicy taste of love form an ambiguous cocktail for Addie. Kristeva gives some clues on the nature of transgressing the borders as follows: Any crime, because it draws attention to the fragility of the law, is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility. He who denies morality is not abject; there can be grandeur in amorality and even in crime that flaunts its disrespect for the law-rebellious, liberating, and suicidal crime. Abjection, on the other hand, is immoral, sinister, scheming, and shady: a terror that dissembles, a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sells you up, a friend who stabs you'. 

Anse Bundren draws a low profile all along the novel. He is not respected by his children. Selfishness governs his lifestyle. Apart from that, it is barely said that he loves his wife. The couple’s coming together is a kind of an involuntary marriage. None of them shows a sign of love against each other. Their relationship is based on a mutual agreement which is consisted of silence mostly. Despite the hatred of them, they do not speak of it explicitly. On the other hand, the last wish of Addie is an important signal. She chooses to be buried in Jefferson. She plans it just to be in peace without having to be near to her husband anymore. At that point, Addie sees Anse as an abject. She wants to get away from him. As Kristeva asserts: It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite. The traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good conscience, the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a savior. 

Anse’s being an abject for Addie makes her disgusted; yet at the same time she enjoys her hidden love affair with Whitfield. That also makes her another abject in the novel. She does not respect the borders and cheats on her husband. Addie’s transgression changes her position from a domestic, silent and unhappy woman to sneaky but a happy woman who can crosses the borders when it is necessary for her.

On the other hand, the common sin of Addie and Whitfield brings them a big surprise: Jewel. Although Whitfield’s feelings about Jewel are not mentioned in the novel, it is known that Addie keeps him as her only precious entity. It is hinted that the relationship between the mother and the child is totally different from the others. I gave Anse Dewey Dell to negative Jewel. Then I gave him Vardaman to replace the child I had robbed him of. And now he has three children that are his and not mine. And then I could get ready to die. Addie accepts her lack of love towards her children except Jewel. Addie shows affection to him, though he can also be seen as an abject for her; because the reason of Jewel’s being is a sin. However, Addie chooses to direct her disgust to her other children instead of Jewel. He shows some signs of selfishness. Jewel does not respect any member of the family. For example, he does not work for the family, but himself. He saves money to buy a horse. It seems that, he is aware of being an outsider of the family. Jewel does not feel the communal spirit. However, in the course of the travel he risks his life for the sake of his mother’s dead body. 

Tull family might be described as the contrast of Bundrens, especially Cora Tull. She always criticizes the position of Addie at home. She crosses the line when she starts giving some household advices to Addie. The ethics and inherited culture manifest themselves in the form of Cora Tull. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to name her as a well-behaved person. She competes in a hidden rivalry with Addie who has gone further than her in feeding the personal needs and desires. 

It is obvious that the decay in the family is represented in the physical world of the novel, too. The physical part of the decay corresponds to the mental and behavioral part. One of the most striking scenes of As I Lay Dying without a doubt is Vardaman’s drilling the face of his mother: And the next morning they found him in his shirt-tail laying asleep on the floor like a felled steer, and the top of the box bored clean full of holes and Cash’s new auger broke off in the last one. When they taken the lid off her they found that two of them had bored on into her face (Faulkner, 1990). 

As a silly, traumatized, young boy he thinks that his mother is lack of air. So, to provide air he tries to make some holes on the coffin. Yet, he ends up with rending Addie’s dead face. The disgusting situation of not burying Addie Bundren’s body and letting it stink is already beyond the perception of normal person. Moreover, the miserable face of the mother is riddled: […] it is the corpse-like, more abstractly, money or the golden calf-that takes on the abjection of waste in the biblical text. A decaying body, lifeless, completely turned into dejection, blurred between the inanimate and the inorganic, a transitional swarming, inseparable lining of a human nature whose life is undistinguishable from the symbolic-the corpse represents fundamental pollution. (Kristeva, 1982:109). Another important action in the novel is the breaking of Cash’s leg. He is kicked by the horse and his leg is broken. After that situation, Anse does not care the emergency of broken leg. Instead, he proposes to use cement to keep the bones together. Moreover, Cash is put on his mother’s coffin till the end of the way. Ironically, he lies on the coffin he built. When examined from the lenses of a third person it is seen that the situation of Bundren family is purely miserable. They are the ones who are not suitable for the standards of ordinary people. Because of that they are more inclined to be the abject object. Cash’s broken leg and its cement-supported poor treatment stand for this. He is no more useful and he becomes a burden who is now wanted by the object (the rest of the family). In that sense there is a similarity between the condition of his mother’s abject corpse and his useless body. “Pollution of the beautiful, self-mutilation, and aesthetic practices of the informe all terminate in an affirmative relation to death in its material existence: corpse and decay” (Menninghaus, 2003). Both of them are seen as the things to get rid of immediately. That is why Anse does not want to spend money and time for a suitable treatment of his leg. Rather than doing this, Anse chooses to mutilate his son forever. 

Although Dewey Dell and Addie have not a strong relationship, their similarity is undeniable. Both of them are unhappy with the circumstances they have. Moreover, they commit adultery and become impregnated. Dewey Dell’s difference from her mother is her rejection of the baby. She condemns her situation contrary to Addie. On the other hand, Addie gives birth to Jewel and tries to make him the only happiness of her life. Dewey Dell searches for the ways of getting rid of the baby, because her baby becomes an abject for her. Abject and the object share the same body; yet the former is not wanted and tried to be excluded from the shared space. Kristeva explains the problem of being a victim of an abject: “Hence a jouissance in which the subject is swallowed up but in which the Other, in return, keeps the subject from foundering by making it repugnant. One thus understands why so many victims of the abject are its fascinated victims-if nor its submissive and willing ones”. Presumably, the most disgusting and attention-grabbing part is where the people around the coffin are disturbed by the smell spreading from the corpse of Addie. On the abjection of woman and decomposing corpse Menninghaus asserts: As the disgusting old woman of classical aesthetics can be read as an emblem of the abject mother, Kristeva reformulates the primary figures of the abject in the construction of the aesthetic — the disgusting woman and the decomposing corpse — as elements of every subject-formation in the field of the paternal symbolic order. 

The obsession of Bundrens of reaching the target makes their senses ineffective: “…and the marshal telling him he would have to move on; folks couldn't stand it. It had been dead eight days…” (Faulkner, 144). At that point, Bundrens do not seem affected by the smell of death like other townspeople. In contrast, they try to supply their needs and continue their way. That scene shows that the members of the family are not aware of the reality: “the Bundren children's obsession with their mother continues even as her increasingly repulsive corpse rots more each day. Despite this repulsiveness, they appear unable to separate themselves from her either physically or psychologically”. They lose their connections with the real-world. Being focused on the aim of burying their mother, Bundrens cannot notice the unbearable odor coming from the coffin. The rotting corpse which has been also drilled by Vardaman starts to become like another living member of the family. Kristeva defines the corpse according to theory of abjection: The corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us. 

The scene of the disturbance of townspeople from the smell of the corpse is the climax from the point of Abjection Theory. Kristeva says: “… corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live” (Kristeva, 1982). So, it can be said that the dead body calls the people around it to the unbearable face of death: Abjection — and more specifically self-abjection — relates most strongly to the physical presence and proximity of death (the actual, unmediated encounter with human remains or with one about to die), as this is more likely to convey death viscerally, rather than intellectually (Chrostowska, 2007). As the body is in homeostasis, in other words lifelessness, the instincts of Thanatos and Eros of Freud can be helpful to understand the situation: If we assume that living things came later than animate ones and arose from them, then the death instinct fits in with the formula we have proposed to the effect that instincts tend towards a return to an earlier state. In the case of Eros (or the love instinct) we cannot apply this formula. To do so would presuppose that living substance was once a unity which had later been torn apart and was now striving towards re-union”. 

Actually, Addie’s whole life is circulated with Thanatos. Yet, the only exception is her affair with Whitfield. At that time and with the born of Jewel, her death instinct leaves its space to life instinct. When she returns to her routines, she understands that the only way out of the boredom and misery is to die. That is why she sees the death as an emergency exit and chooses her eternal place as far as possible to rest in peace. Apart from wishing to rest in peace, she does not allow other people to be in peace with her abject corpse: “the ultimate representation of abjection is the corpse, and Addie spends the majority of the narrative physically rotting, being followed by buzzards and offending the community”. That situation is generated from Addie’s powerful woman figure. Her independent characteristic continues to dominate the process even after her death: “the disposition of her dead body that generates the narrative, the novel uses Addie's abject corpse to mediate between language and soma just as it uses her abject corpse to mediate between life and death” (Blaine, 1994). 

The reason of Addie’s desire to be buried in Jefferson is undeniably related to her relationship with her children and husband. Especially, Anse’s selfishness and their relationship’s shallowness drag her to the idea of surviving with the help death. 

Conclusion 

Anse’s selfishness shows itself in several parts of the novel. He does not care about the needs or wishes of anyone with just one exception: Addie’s last wish. While making the wish of Addie true, he makes his family suffer as much as possible by his own drives. On the other hand, probably the most striking action of Anse is getting new teeth and a wife just after the burial of Addie: “It's Cash and Jewel and Vardaman and Dewey Dell,’ pa says kind of hangdog and proud too, with his teeth and all, even if he wouldn't look at us. ‘Meet Mrs. Bundren, he says”. Anse makes the situation harder to bear for his children. As it was stated before, coming of an abject requires noncompliance with hidden rules and touching the untouchable areas. Both physically (with new teeth) and morally (having a new wife), Anse accomplishes to become another abject himself. The inequality between the masculine and feminine roles in the novel, the characters have difficulty in finding their new positions after the death of Addie. As the mother’s role is much more than just being a mother because of Anse’s inadequate role in fatherhood, the new era turns the characters adrift.