Insanity In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Insanity gradually takes over the mind until there is nothing left of the original person. As I lay Dying by William Faulkner, a story as the title suggests that focuses on death. In this case, the death the story could relate to is a person’s physical death or psychologically downfall. Darl became mentally unstable due to the war, slowly the insanity that was present grew to overtake him, and his insanity intensified as the family desecrated the dead body. The war leaves the survivors with gory memories and survivor’s guilt. A soldier returns knowing that comrades died and could not be saved. The war cracked Darl’s psyche, but he was able to maintain a mostly normal persona. Darl came back from war with this affliction on his mind, and adding to this stress is his mother’s impending death. Although, briefly mentioned his past in war had to do with his insanity as we learn this information when he is taken to Jackson, “Darl had a little spy-glass he got in France at the war” (Faulkner, 791). After returning home from that ordeal, he has to experience Addie’s slow descent to her demise with him unable to help bringing back memories of war breaking his psyche further. Those feelings of grief and loss surfaced

No proper burial and the desecration of his mother’s body reminded him of what he went through in war, and that is why he tried to burn her body, “It was either send him to Jackson, or have Gillespie sue us, because he knowed some way that Darl set fire to it” (Faulkner, 782). The thread that hold his mind together snapped when he “heard” Addie, consequently resulting in the burning of his mother’s body, “‘She wants Him to hide her away from the sight of man’” (Faulkner, 775). He felt justified in burning Addie’s body because she wanted peace away from sight, “‘So she can lay down her life’” (Faulkner, 775). Insanity took over leaving a shell of a body; we can see this in Darl’s last narration when he refers to himself in third