Character Analysis: As I Lay Dying: Darl Bundren

Darl Bundren: sane intellect in an insane world or mentally unstable son of Anse Bundren? In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, the Bundren family goes on a long journey to Jefferson to bury their dead mother. Darl is the second oldest child, behind Cash, of Addie and Anse Bundren and the leading narrator throughout the novel. At the end of the journey he is sent to an insane asylum in Jackson, his family classified him as mentally insane. Darl was not insane, he was just the only sane man in the insane Bundren world. He survived the two greatest catastrophes, man can go through, Anse Bundren is not a proper judge of character, Darl still commits good deeds, and he seems to have a different outlook on everything else. Darl was different from the rest of the Bundren family, in his monologues he is distinctively

When Darl says, “He don’t mean nothing. He’s sick; got burned in a fire last night, and he ain’t himself” (Faulkner 230). Darl was very envious of Jewel, he craved the love Jewel received from their mother. An insane man would not defend a man he was jealous of in a situation similar to the one they was in. Jewel started the altercation and Darl defended him to end it in a peaceful manner. This is the action of a sane man trying to save his brother’s life. When Darl was sent off to the insane asylum, the Bundren family made the decision together. The primary decision maker was Anse Bundren, who is not the proper judge of a man’s character. Anse had stolen Jewel’s horse, stole ten dollars from Dewey Dell, only takes his wife to bury her so he can get new teeth, and remarried a week after his wife’s death. From the way he acted, he was willing to sell out his own family to get what he wanted. The way it sounds, Anse would not be beyond selling out Darl as mentally insane, so he would not be required to pay reparations to Gillespie after the barn burned