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Essay Subject: Role of Security Council Resolutions in legal, economic & military struggle to oust Iraq. Background, oil, security, politics.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Role of Security Council Resolutions in legal, economic & military struggle to oust Iraq. Background, oil, security, politics. Paper Introduction: In his earlier masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner filters the images and soundless impressions of the last of the Compson family through the afflicted voice of the Compson's idiot son Benjamin. By employing the dramatic device of a mentally disturbed narrator, Faulkner can use flashbacks, stream of consciousness, dramatic time and location shifts without clearly identifying their origin. Malcolm Cowley points out that Faulkner employs this disjointed interior monologue or internal time, to project the reader inside the minds and mental processes of his characters, where time is "measured by sense and sensation rather than by clocks" (Cowley, 12). In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner not only breaks the classic narrative form, he fragments it entirely. Addie's death and funeral procession is certainly not a chronology of events. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Faulkner's 5 -plus viewpoints heard in As I Lay Dying, like Cubismitself, emphasizes the disintegration and destruction of form of humanlife. Darl likes to watch and be watched. Addie's coffin on the sawhorse he paints as a"cubistic bug" (Faulkner 2 9). New York: Garland Publishing, 1985.Faulkner, William. Darl describes his own "fury" as "quietwith stagnation" (Faulkner 156). Like Addie, Darl undergoes a death also: one of the mindand spirit. The work ethic, asrepresented by Cash, offers little acceptance or confrontation of modernevents. Darl will now always be remembered, never ignored, in memory. Occasionally the suspicions vanish, and then the looks becomeone of sharing of a mutual experience that goes beyond words such as thatbetween Cash and Darl when "he and I look at one another . Addie did not want her second son (Faulkner 164); has neveraccepted him, and never loved him. Darl too will be buried metaphorically behind theasylum walls of Jackson. He is no longer heldin the new world of upheaval and turmoil. For Faulkner the only choice is one between being dead and real orbeing mad and a fantasy. Pathetically, Darl waits in vain by herdeathbed for Addie to recognize him at last, if only by a look, as her son:"He just stood and looked at his dying mother, his heart too full forwords" (Faulkner 24). Ignorant of the true nature of existence(which Darl confronts and understands), the Bundrens live in a world ofillusion. Darl's logical future is one of insanity. . In Darl's final personal chapter, Darl begins it laughing: Darl has gone to Jackson. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it (Faulkner 223). In the pivotal river scene, Darl isfascinated by the river. Cash, too, succumbsto social norms and condemns Darl's burning of the barn because of itsdestructive nature: There just aint nothing justifies the deliberate destruction of what a man has built with his own sweat and stored the fruit of his sweat into (Faulkner 228). He couldn't hardly say it for laughing. Darl's narrative sections naturally assume a wider, more far-reachingstyle. Darl--the soothsayer and prophet--is in exile, neverto be seen again. Faulkner maintains Darl's confused statusthroughout the novel. In another irony, the threatening river seems toDarl as "peaceful, like machinery does after you have watched it andlistened to it for along time" (Faulkner 156). That's how the world isgoing to end" (Faulkner 38). Darl, too, thinks the journey mad--the ultimate irony. Darl tauntsJewel: "Do you know she is going to die, Jewel?" (Faulkner 38) or "Yourmother was a horse, but who was your father, Jewel?" (Faulkner 2 2). He starts in the middle of the story in the middle of a pathneither expressing the scene from the outside, nor entirely from Darl'spoint of view. In many ways, As I Lay Dyingnot only describes Addie's death, but Darl's living death as well. He isshunned, and finally, as madness seemingly consumes him, Darl is sent awayto Jackson to bury the family secrets forever. . In the course of transporting Addie's coffin, theBundrens are plunged into chaos: first into water and then into fire. To this end, Faulkner gives Darl the last laugh on society andfamily. Eyes Without A Face Darl's point of view ultimately concentrates on Faulkner's totalvision of life. With the attentionto basic elemental and structural relationships, Cubism likewise stripsaway the layers of recognizable figures. . In Faulkner's South, that vision involves total incongruityand absurdity in the face of death and decay. No longer can the family befocused on the matriarch of Southern tradition. Regardless of his penetrating gazeoutward, on the inside, Darl is the most vulnerable, the most exposed andthe most naked. This multiple perspective of Darl's and peculiar insight lets Darlconceive the scene before him by combining sight, memory and imagination--much like an artist who creates a collage. New York: Random House, 1964.Grigson, Geoffrey. Abstract and surrealistic painting too turned away from recognizablereality, entirely to discover its essence. Darl's responsibility and role in the Bundren family is to constantlyeye and spy on the family and expose its darkest secrets, even if it meansdescruction. . He sees Vardaman's face at the moment ofAddie's death "fading into the dusk like apiece of paper painted on afailing wall" (Faulkner 48). Darl,despite or because of his madness, intimately understands his own problemand situation. In fact, Darl describes andassociates characters in this way. In fact, Darl "sits at the supper table with his eyes gonefurther than the food and the lamp, full of the land dug out of his skulland the holes filled with distance beyond land" (Faulkner 25-26). Faced with the knowledge of others' foibles, his own madness and thehelplessness and finality of death, Darl can only laugh a sick, dark andtwisted laugh to himself, talking about himself: "'Why do you laugh?' Isaid. As I Lay Dying ends with a shadow of order. As his"mad" vision appears outside of the real world at times, his voice isequally as different and outside the Burton family's immediate surroundingsof Yoktawpanapa County. Darl speaks to himself and addresses no one. . He can read his thoughts (Faulkner 137) and guess Darl's intentions(Faulkner 223). Ironically, Jewel does not know that he has an identity. Even Darl does not know the reason for his laughter. It was bad" (Faulkner228). In a way her death is like losing the mother for thesecond time. He knows Dewey Dell's secret andJewel's true parentage. is of decay and rotting leaves . Faulkner's world seems filled with madmen and fools.As I Lay Dying is a tale of madness told by a madman. She violently jumps Darl atthe scene of the fire and, in the process, likely reveals Darl as the causeof the blaze. Yet Faulkner does not neatly shape the story along purely Cubistlines and philosophies. Here, every tree becomes a tree of life. Darl's dualemotions also paint the world on edge as a "single monotony of desolationleaning with that terrified quality a little from right to left, as thoughwe had reached the place where motion of the wasted world accelerates justbefore the final precipice" (Faulkner 139). Darl is the only family member who laughs (orcries) during the journey "setting back there on the plan seat with Cash,with his dead ma laying in her coffin at his feet, laughing" (Faulkner 99).In the rough and tumble accusation scene that follows the burning of thebarn, Darl laughs again: "'Better,' he said. Yet, this still cannot protect Darl from the fear of recriminationand public opinion as a result of his act of defiance. "Down there it'll be quiet," Cash tells him, "withnone of the bothering and such. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. Many of Darl's images are painted by the thought of birth andbirthing particularly in nature such as "the trees, motionless, are ruffledout to the last twig, swollen, increased, as though quick with young"(Faulkner 72). The path runs straight as a plumb-line, worn smooth by feet and baked brick-hard by July, between the green rows of laid- by cotton, to the cottonhouse in the center of the field (Faulkner 3). 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 (Faulkner 115). But it is better so for him. Late in the book, Darl makesan explicit verbal reference to Cubism in describing the Gillespie's barnbursting into flames: The front, the conical facade with the square orifice of doorway broken only by the square squat shape of the coffin the sawhorses like a cubistic bug, comes into relief (Faulkner 2 8-2 9). Any suggestion of realisticfigures is abandoned and instead relies on color, shape and texture todefine the picture and evoke an almost organic feeling in the viewer.Faulkner seems to echo this artistic feeling through Darl as he describesthe colors "about Jewel's ankles a runnel of yellow neither water nor earthswirls, curving with the yellow road neither of earth nor water, down thehill dissolving into a streaming mass of dark green neither of earth norsky" (Faulkner 48). Byemploying the dramatic device of a mentally disturbed narrator, Faulknercan use flashbacks, stream of consciousness, dramatic time and locationshifts without clearly identifying their origin. Darl" (Faulkner 242). The Bundrens are left with their lives still rooted indreams and consider the future with as much emotion and focus as theireating bananas in a wagon. Echoing the futility of actionin The Sound and Fury, Darl watches Jewel and his horse in a "rigidterrific hiatus" (Faulkner 12). In perhapsFaulkner's most pessimistic viewpoint, through Darl, all existence seemsmeaningless. The events are timeless and etched--as they wouldbe inside the brain or a piece of crystal. ." (Faulkner 226-227). thedecay of the American South" (Faulkner 429). Darl. Far from it. Addie's deathand the family's death march procession dramatically highlights the end ofthe soft, romantic, rustic South come face to face with the harsh realismof new industrialism. Addie's death and funeral procession iscertainly not a chronology of events. Darl's range of experience sharply contrastsfrom those of the family, neighbors and other onlookers. What Faulkner seemsto be asking with As I Lay Dying is what is society doing to change itsabsurdist behavior. Yet, for the most part, the Bundrens keep their shieldsup and keep Darl at arm's length. Faulkner seemingly uses Darl's fate as apreamble for Jewel and the Bundren family. The Portable Faulkner. While he is not present, Darl can also "see" Addie's death. New York: Viking Press, 1966.Cox, Dianne L. Faulkner masksthe real purpose of the laughter against Darl's mental "death". Ironically,while he sees all, he has little to no influence to those around him. Something else must be substituted in its place. looks thatplunge unimpeded though one another's eyes and into the ultimate secretplace where for an instant Cash and Darl crouch flagrant and unabashed . Addie--the central core ofthe family--is gone. He is protected since Darl maintains nodefenses for the new order of the south. In his earlier masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulknerfilters the images and soundless impressions of the last of the Compsonfamily through the afflicted voice of the Compson's idiot son Benjamin. Yet, likethe ancient soothsayers, Darl is not entirely believed nor trusted. Faulkner deliberately places the country wise, practical and saneBundren family in this dreamworld. They put him on the train, laughing, down the long car laughing, the heads turning like the heads of owls when he passed (Faulkner 243). A description ofDarl can only be inferred by his own descriptions of others. Darl isnot seen from without but is instead heard from within. Ironically, like the ancient blind seer, Darl is "touched."As Tull says: "It's like he had got into the inside of you, someway. When Darl speaks, he describes places and people in terms that rangefrom nature and country life to painting and sculpture, presumably derivedfrom Darl's short trip to France. Malcolm Cowley points outthat Faulkner employs this disjointed interior monologue or internal time,to project the reader inside the minds and mental processes of hischaracters, where time is "measured by sense and sensation rather than byclocks" (Cowley, 12). In Surrealistic terms, Faulkner implies that man plays a small,insignificant part in more powerful events, that he is a "clot" in a swirlof events, unable to grasp or shape reality. Towards the end of the novel, he describes hisbrother Jewel's eyes as looking "like spots of white paper pasted on a highsmall football" (Faulkner 2 3). But his viewpointmakes sense in his role as a conscience and channel. Instead, Darl allows Faulkner to reveal anordinary society gone mad. Darl constantly strips away andrecasts characters and events. In this way, we see Darl'sconflict between birth and destruction, life and death. Darl juxtaposes both vivid, realimpressions of a scene or person with unreal associations. Fragments & Cubism Faulkner uses Darl's monologues as far more than a record of events.Faulkner cloaks true facts and emotions in a sea of short impressions anddescriptions. Instead Faulkner, through Darl (and acollection of family and outside observers), provides us with a rainbow ofimpressions and emotions. His viewpoint is otherworldly, distant, omnipresent and omniscient."It was like he was outside of it too . Dewey Dell feelsstark naked: The land runs out of Darl's eyes; they swim to pin-points. As the truevoice of reason and restraint, Darl's laughter lashes out against thesadness and hollowness of the Bundren's and that of Yoktawpanapa'sprovincialism, fear, and insulation. Darl sees all and knows all. Onlywhen he is recognized by outsiders as insane, does Darl become real tohimself. Surrounded by madness, is it no wonder that Darl has adifficult time discriminating between reason and unreason? The Visionary In the midst of the dream and madness, Darl represents Faulkner'struest vision. Darl is both afflicted and protected by his madness. Darl As Tragic Foil Ultimately, the tragedy of Darl can be fixed in his unrequitedmotherly love. He describesJewel as having wooden eyes, a wooden face, and wooden body: exactly whatDarl is not and what he would like to be. To Darl and Faulkner, seeing and imagination are not separate, theyare one. It isalso a harbinger of dying to come for the Bundrens and their elk; only Darlliterally and figuratively has the last, terrible laugh. He sat on theground and us watching him, laughing and laughing. Faulkner points the way through Darl. It is all and one at the same time: Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cotton-house can see Jewel's frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own . "William Faulkner." The Concise Encyclopedia of Modern World Literature. Darl has finally assumed anidentity for the first time. This world is nothis world; this life his life" (Faulkner 25 ). Darl is my brother. He accuses society ofprovincialism, discrimination, and emotional abuse. For Faulkner, only Darl has escaped unscathed. Jewel reacts to Darl's departurehysterically: "Darl. The Bundrens haveaccomplished their "mission." Addie is buried and will be replaced by the"duck-shaped" woman. But it will be a shallow existence listening to newrecords on the new record player. At the same time Darlsuggests being sucked up by the river as though "the clotting which is youhad dissolved into the myriad original motion" (Faulkner 156). Faulkner's broken structure keeps the reader at a distance andalways keeps us in the position of a spectator rather than participant:much like Darl. Darl's mind is so supple and fluid that it slips from onething to another and changes place and time. Darl's plight does have its ultimate effect, particularly on Jewel--Darl's nemesis and alter ego. From the opening pages of the book, Faulkner plunges the reader intoconfusion. . Repeatedly, thereare references to Darl's eyes, "them queer eyes of hisn that makes folkstalk" (Faulkner 119). They are doomed to continue on in theirfoolish practices and jealousies. Like memoryor dreams, As I Lay Dying provides the reader with fragments of storiesmingled together, like watching a film without a beginning, middle or end. For example, in the antic-climactic burnscene, Darl describes Jewel and Gillespie as "two figures in a Greekfrieze" (Faulkner 211). Likesomehow you was looking at yourself and your doings outen his eyes"(Faulkner 119). Geoffrey Grigson says thatFaulkner's "prevalent smell . Watson Branch in his essay, "Darl Bundren's'Cubistic' Vision," says that "Darl often exhibits specific Cubisttechniques in the verbal constructs by when he expresses his forms,multiple points of view, collages, emphasis on two-dimensional surfacerather than three-dimensional depth, and dislocation of forms in space"(Cox, 117). It'll be better for you" (Faulkner 228).But the order seems illusory and transitory. The behavior of theBundren family acts as a negative role model. Unfortunately, Faulkner impliesthat neither do the Bundrens. .." (Faulkner 135). Cash says "what a shame Darlcouldn't be to enjoy it too. He begun to laugh again.'Better,' he said. Clearly Jewel's reaction to Darl'sdeparture presages future shattering of the old order. Works CitedCowley, Malcolm. Addie's death for Darl once again resurrects the anguish andsuffering of his birth and brings to a head the frustrations he hascontinually faced. . It justis. Surely the wholejourney taken by the Bundrens is a senseless and useless one. In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner not only breaks the classic narrativeform, he fragments it entirely. He describes the eyes of Jewel's horse asthey "roll in the dusk like marbles on a gaudy velvet cloth" (Faulkner174). The boundaries are arbitrary and the beliefs are varied.We see this arbitrary nature of madness vividly in Darl's dark laughter andawkwardly timed emotions. This allows himan other world viewpoint such as when he can "see" Jewel's "wooden face"(Faulkner 4) inside the cotton house that has no window to let him do that. Past, present, and future seemto exist side by side without logical relation to one another. To Darl, he has no mother since "I cannot love mymother because I have no mother" (Faulkner 89). It is obvious that Darl is envious of Jewel and resentful sinceJewel is the favorite, the shining ornament, if you will. The Bundren'sexpedition is foolish in the eyes of the community; Vardaman, the child,believes it is a foolish idea by adults. Darl redirects his frustrations towards Jewel and Dewey Dell. . Thatvision is confirmed by Peabody's account. What it evokes in a characterlike Darl is akin to the "horror" which Josef Conrad's main character Kurtzexperiences in the darkest jungles of Africa in Heart of Darkness. . Darl must laugh when his reason isconfronted by the absurdity of the Bundrens and their insane world. Only Cash shows any understanding forDarl. William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. DeweyDell resents Darl having caught her with Lafe and knowing the secret of herpregnancy. Instead, Darl believes that in birth there is death: "It takestwo people to make you, and one people to die. Infact, Darl knows that he does not have an identity and psychologicallysuffers because he is nonexistent. As I Lay Dying. Of greater intensity, is Darl's relationship and antipathy withJewel. Darl and Madness Like Darl's view of life and death, Faulkner also suggests thatmadness is everywhere. Addie only finds the presence and reality in deathas the focus of the family. 'Is it because you hate the sound of laughing?'" (Faulkner 244).Darl's inner speak in particular reemphasizes his own lack of identity andfocus on himself in the present. Darlacts as much as the family conscience and chronicler as he is as aparticipant. In a way, Faulkner's very deconstructed structure shows how thefamily and community is being torn apart and fragmented. New York: Hawthorne Books, 1963.----------------------- 9 Only Pa thinks ahead of the future with his newmail order bride. Darl not only doubts his identity, he doubts his very existence whenhe says "I dont know what I am, I dont know if I am or not" (Faulkner 76).Darl's only protection is what he sees and what he says. Faulkner uses Darl as a focal point for stating that madness existsby common consent. Clearly Faulknerdoes not give us a solution. Even Cash,perhaps the most stable of the bunch has a hard time: Sometimes I ain't so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. There is a touch of Salvador Dali'sand Rene Magritte's Surrealism thrown in for good measure where images andtime literally melt and flow. In fact, Faulkner's writing in As I Lay Dying closely parallels thefragmentation and disjointed references to Cubist painters in the modernpost World War I world in which the Bundrens find themselves. ForDewey Dell, Darl becomes anathema and hateful. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.