Darl

          Darl is known as the character that everyone is unsettled by, that everyone sees as weird, disturbing, queer (as in strange) and potentially dangerous to himself and everyone else. At the end of the book, we see him be carried away "to Jackson" on a train, narrated not from the point of view of Darl, but from the point of view of Darl as he sees himself being looked at from a nearby onlooker. This strange viewpoint is not the first strange view we get from Darl. Throughout the book, we get points in his narration in which he narrates from the viewpoint of other characters, and he just acts as the main omniscient narrator for the entire journey. On top of this, we get several times when people are able to communicate with him without actually talking to him, and we get times when Darl says he "knows" something without anyone telling him, or really without him obtaining any evidence.

          These occurrences are interesting, but they all tie to an important idea: Darl does not seem to act within his own body. Darl does not speak from his own body, he speaks from higher up, looking down and choosing who to narrate from next. From this vantage point, Darl can't help but know things that he was never told, hear things no one else heard, and speak things that no one hears, but still comprehends. However, earlier before this story, Darl doesn't realize this is happening, and so can't use it to its full extent. The times when he "just knows" something, they are always based in the past. Conversely to that Darl seems very knowledgeable about what his dead mother wants (ending the journey) and is able to pull it off with ease (burning the barn).

           From this vantage point as well, Darl can describe the actions of others and what they are thinking just as good as they can. For people who don't necessarily know they should be narrating, the rest of the family is very good at describing what they are doing, not only in the least complex way, but also in kind of a stream-of-consciousness way, describing in detail what is happening in their minds. The best person to put all this together into a cohesive piece would be Darl, sitting high above everyone, aiming to narrate, with access to everyone's minds. In other words, this is not being narrated by anyone other than Darl.

          It's not perfect, and Darl certainly messes it up from time to time. In the beginning of the book we see Darl begin to narrate, in his chapter, Jewel's experience with the horse, only to quickly shift perspective into Jewel's mind, giving us the only insight we have into Jewel. With Cash as well, we see that Darl has difficulty maintaining contact, and is pushed out before much can be said. The largest failure, however, is that Darl begins to invest too much time looking at other characters and forgetting to reinforce is own connection to himself. When a suddenly large amount of mental stress is placed on Darl (the authorities coming to take him away), he is off in Cash's mind and can only narrate from that point of view. He begins talking to himself through Cash, and it snaps any connection he has to his own body. The next narration we get from Darl is of him talking to himself out side of his own body, and we never see him again.

          Darl is certainly a character in this book, but while he acts as a functioning entity, we have at the same time his mind jumping around from consciousness to consciousness, providing a broad view of what's happening on the journey. This brings new meaning to the idea "his eyes are full of the land:" he isn't in his own mind, he's surveying everything, looking down at the land from above, and narrating it all.