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.
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.
Nice post. Even though Darl is a morally complicated character, he is probably one of my favorite characters in this book precisely because of what you're talking about - he is really attuned to other people in a way that no other character is. He can understand and immerse himself in other people's perspectives to the point that he, like you said, loses himself. I kind of love that even though it makes him super creepy. It makes him one of the most thoughtful characters in the book, where thoughtfulness and empathy are very much missing from everyone else. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteHmm. It's certainly difficult to consider Darl as both a morally flawed character and and an omniscient narrator - that's very troubling for our interpretation of the book. I love the complexity in it, though. Is his clairvoyance just an unexplained superpower of sorts that he has, or a fascinating literary device that Faulkner uses to get everything across? When does the character become the narrator? Is Darl's narration simply omniscient, or similarly colored by his character's faults and morals?
ReplyDeleteI don't know, but it certainly adds an unforgettable and enigmatic layer to him, and maybe Faulkner intended him to be unexplainable.
I think that Darl's omnipotence makes his narration the most interesting, but that he always seemed so removed, from never sharing his opinions to the extreme of narrating in the third person, is very unnerving to me. It makes me wonder if Faulkner was did this to foreshadow that Darl is not entirely there or was it to show that Darl as a being was more of a lens to the land? Throughout his narration, I just wanted to ask how he felt about all that happened. I wanted to know if someone so all-knowing, could know how they felt. Great post, Sam!
ReplyDeleteIn the end, Darl's omniscience is what does him in, and as they go to put him in a mental institution, it becomes harder to trust all of his earlier narration. It's also hard to tell how much of his omniscience is great prediction skills, and what might be truly supernatural.
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