As I Lay Dying Dal Bundren Character Analysis

William Faulkner’s, As I Lay Dying, recounts the tale of Addie Bundren’s childrens’ journey across Mississippi in order to bury her deceased body. Though all of the family members are experiencing similar events during the excursion, Darl Bundren narrates these situations and how he perceives them differently. Thus, one is able to analyze Darl’s actions as he exercises his own individual prose and emotion. For the dysfunctional family in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, delusion is a major theme. Throughout the story one can see how reality is rather idiosyncratic as various events are obscured by the narration of each child. Darl is the only child who seems to be able to offer a detached sense of all of these events that are happening

The Bundren family was faced with a lawsuit after Darl burned down Gillespie’s barn. Although the Bundrens has the choice to pay the fine, they decided to send Darl away for good. Sadly, as the men from the mental institution arrive, Darl is beaten senseless by Dewey Dell and Jewel, whom Darl has tried to desperately to help. Darl’s final chapter in As I Lay Dying deviates completely from earlier on in the story. Darl is no longer the reliable and tenacious narrator introduced in his first monologue. Darl’s family has driven him insane in their efforts to cope with Addie’s death. Throughout As I Lay Dying, Darl depicted scenes, characters, and emotions with descriptive, erudite, and laconic sentences normally associated with Southern colloquium. Now, Darl’s thoughts are more atypical and his malapropism creates a whole new Darl Bundren. Darl now suffers from an inability to communicate with words.” (Karim 3) His dialogue is vacillated and interrupted by awkward outbursts such as “Yes yes yes yes yes...” (253). Without a doubt, by the end of the story, the Bundren family had permanently changed Darl’s speech, thought, and personality as a