As I Lay Dying Postmodernism Analysis

Postmodernism is a departure from modernism that combines government, technology, and corporatism into one big impersonal system where individuality and individual meaning are undermined. American writers have showed the change from modernism to postmodernism through their work. In 1930, William Faulkner showed this change with his novel, As I Lay Dying. The members of the Bundren family in the story are true representations of the postmodern people because even though they are all a part of one family, their individual personalities all lie below it. A major theme of this book is family. Although from the outside perspective the Bundren’s are all together a dysfunctional family, each member is their own person and has their own things

Darl starts out the story and narrates it mostly throughout making him the more subjective narrator. Many people on the outside of the Bundren family think that Darl is strange and awkward which causes a lot of them to alienate him from the group. What they don’t know is that he is just trying to find out more information on his brother Jewel in a more private way. Darl represents the postmodern person because he is constantly just seen as a part of a crazy family which a weird personality while his individual self is undermined because of all the drama. Darl finds out Jewel is actually not Anse’s son, Darl’s father, which causes the initial issue. Jewel is the favorite and loved on by Addie, their mother who is expected to die soon, which inflicts more conflict between the siblings, especially Darl. You immediately see Darl’s jealous and frustration with Jewel in the first paragraph when he says, “Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cottonhouse can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a fully head above my own” (Faulkner 698). This is another example of the postmodern person, even though there are two people there, Darl is ignored which makes his individuality hidden and