After watching the debate last night between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and the specific interaction regarding Hunter Biden and his “dishonorable discharge” from the Navy due to cocaine addiction, I thought about what it meant to be vilified for neurodivergence, for invisible conditions many paint to be self-inflicted, a “choice,” and something to be ashamed about. And then I thought about the reality of these conditions – how, really, we only are able to understand through perceiving others, but that in itself is untrue, because my truth as a being isn’t essentially determinant on the evaluation by others. Connecting this to As I Lay Dying, I find many of these same themes rising in regard to Darl’s supposed insanity and eventual shipment off to a mental institution.

I ask myself, does our own insanity belong to us? That is, does our perceived chaos actually render us chaotic, or is it the third-party opinion that deems an individual insane? I believe it is a matter of both, none of us are sane and none of us are insane. We are all different and seriously complicated. The way in which we all process grief is different and is ultimately unfair to judge someone based on their ability to cope. Darl handles and processes his grief much differently than the rest of the family. He is written off as unemotional or separate from the reality of death since he sees it exactly as it is. He aims to ground the rest of the family by stating the reality of death: she is dead, she is gone, and she is not coming back. He laughs, perhaps in shock at the sheer weight of it all and at the others in their posthumously turn towards selfishness/self-preservation (the new teeth is more easily rendered selfish, while attempting to abort an unwanted pregnancy isn’t in my opinion, though in the time period and region, even today, abortion would be considered a selfish act).

This brings me to another point: detachment from sadness and acceptance of reality. Darl served in the military and likely experienced PTSD and/or other consequent mental disorders likely as a result of seeing things we cannot imagine overseas: murder, genocide, the rape of women and children. This isn’t a supposed reality – these things exist, as exposed by the Abu Ghraib files and many other documents revealing the cruel atrocities of war. Thus, as a result, his means of coping with reality is obviously going to be different from his families, who can only visualize the world through their poor, rural, American perspectives. And like I mentioned earlier, exposure to this brutality and death can engender at least two results: addiction/numbing and acceptance/detachment. While Hunter Biden used drugs to cope with his pain and numb the intensity of it, Darl appears detached from his grieving process. Not that this is a bad thing, per say, but rather that he has already accepted Addie’s death as true and sees little value in assimilating to the chaotic destruction that is the Bundren family. While other’s see his reactions as indicative of insanity, they are merely differences (not good nor bad) in processing death.

After Darl committed arson on the barn in an attempt to scorch Addie’s casket and put an end to the painful and life-altering journey, Cash relates and empathizes in a way with Darl, saying that “sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way… it’s like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it” (Faulkner 233). This statement is so deeply profound and sums up the entirety of my point: none of us are insane until we are declared insane by others, Cash adding that the difference is majority versus minority. If you are outnumbered by those who consider you crazy, you are crazy. Thus, are labels (like all others) are assigned by others according to societal structures and codes.

There are a few times in the novel when his behavior is acknowledged as potentially logical, the starkest example being his instinct to get off of the wagon while the other family members didn’t. Even his family acknowledges this instinct as perhaps indicative of reasoned behavior. Yet, he is still shipped off to a mental institution. In one way it can appear as a way to escape punishment for his crimes, and another as a condemnation: he’s different, he’s embarrassing, and we do not want him to ruin our family (though they are, very clearly, relatively ruined already). However, even in the face of this adversity, he laughs. He escapes the shame he’s supposed to feel by laughing at the farce of it all: the family is left with little to nothing, and the only one who attempted to renormalize the family and get them to end the tumultuous journey is being shipped off to be institutionalized. And yet, those laughs justify his family’s decision to lock him up. He is crazy, because little to no truth is communicated between the family, and thus the only thing one can perceive him through is his actions and his behavior, which indeed deviate from the norm.

So, how much of mental illness is simply acceptance of a bleak reality? Rather, are we all naturally insane to believe we live in a world where all are loved, safe, comforted, and certain? It may be that the truly sane individuals are the ones medicated, doped up, or those who have achieved a sober accepting of a difficult reality.

The Sound and the Fury composes a simultaneously stereotypical and still deeply complex image of Reconstruction south, where norms and stereotypes are displayed but intricately expanded beyond ignorant perceptions through Faulkner’s humanization of these characters. However, at the same time, I want to immediately dispel any heroism or white-savior-worship to ensue by saying black people are infinitely complex and multifaceted and Faulkner’s creation of multifaceted characters does not warrant applause or admiration. However, this complexity illustrated most significantly through Dilsey does warrant conversation and curious exploration as the character’s distinct individualism eliminates many typical mammy connotations.

Throughout the novel, it is important to state that in this web of corrupted chaos, Dilsey is perhaps the only real voice of value and integrity, much of which she owes to her spiritual practice and faith. And while she has these values, she isn’t a “be kind and loyal” black caretaker in that she operates on her own system as she chooses, the first example of which being her allowance and encouragement of the children to go play in the rain when Miss Compson wouldn’t allow such behavior. Historically, mammy characters are kind, loyal and void of any of their own thought processes or reasonings, merely a selfless, dehumanized and entirely desexualized caricature of dark skinned, larger and middle aged Black women. However, through these behaviors and decisions we realize that Dilsey goes against the mother’s wishes because she knows best — not that she thinks that, per say, but that from our reader’s perspective, we understand and trust her to know better than any other character in the novel. She has the most sense. And she is the most human. She epitomizes goodness while other characters dip their toes in destructive patterns and behaviors. 

For example, we see a stark difference in humanity between Jason, a bitter and scornful misogynist, and Dilsey, a woman who aside from maintaining the order and balance between the two families earns deep societal respect, particularly in her church community, for adhering to a code of ethics. However, she isn’t a silent but good character whose victimhood overshadows their identity, for she also is not afraid to say what must be said regardless of whom she is speaking to. While she knows Jason intimately, a typical Southern mammy, historically speaking, would seldom interject her own opinion or influence into conversation, but in The Sound and the Fury, she condemns Jason’s dishonest and unethical attempts to prevent Caddy from seeing her daughter, saying “I like to know whut’s de hurt in letting dat po chile see her baby”. She creates pause and reflection and stops the movement of the scene, demonstrating her deep influence and impact on the family and in the novel. But perhaps even more striking, even more separated from common mammy tropes is her direct confrontation and challenging of Jason’s character and masculinity. She states “yous a cold man, Jason. If a man you is,” a moment that clearly signifies that much of this story, though never told from her perspective and limited in outright and blatantly stating her impact, is hers. It’s interesting to explore the typical manifestations of a mammy character and how, in many ways, Faulkner challenged these stereotypes and denied that role for Dilsey, instead and emphasizing her humanity and connection, but in many ways still subjecting her to the same situations and responsibilities a Reconstruction South black caretaker would have.

Benjy’s process of perceiving and understanding existence is highly overlooked and labeled as insignificant idiocy when his perception of time and relationships through sensory imagery is extremely profound. While it doesn’t allow for readers to follow a typical linear time structure, it gives the audience “…a poetic and more sympathetic understanding of existence…” also mentioning specific examples of sensory perception from The Sound and the Fury: “I could smell the clothes flapping, and the smoke blowing across the branch” (Faulkner 14).

Faulkner, through his characters and personally, expresses his disbelief in the value of Benjy’s sentience, limiting his existence to his connoted confusing, chaotic, continuously burdensome behavior. As mentioned in Adler’s essay, to Faulkner, “Benjy is ‘someone capable only of knowing what happened but not why’” (Faulkner, “Paris Review” 1) (Adler). However, when Faulkner discusses and analyzes the most effective and influential means of artistic expression, he states that music better expresses what he attempts to explain “clumsily in words” (Adler). This excerpt reminded me of an interview I watched with New Zealand pop star Lorde, who described her experiences having synethesia and the ability to see images through music. In a sense, this is similar to what Faulkner is expressing, his own belief that music better expresses images he tries to express through words, and his own use of the word “clumsily” easily draws me back to descriptions of Benjy’s behavior. Thus, I think while Faulkner may not recognize the beauty in Benjy’s abnormal mode of perception and observation, the ability to take in moments in time so intensely and utilizing all of your senses, and to remember that and process future decisions based on those moments and experiences is remarkable. I liked Carolyn Porter’s mention of Benjy’s existence being “more poetic than narrative, and perhaps more pictorial than either, especially if we include cubist painting as a reference point” (Keith/Porter 40). While Lorde may utilize her synesthesia to create highly praised Grammy winning albums, Benjy’s unique mode of processing is consistently undermined and the meaning or significance of his existence as a sentient being ignored.

Works Cited:

Keith, LeeAnna, and Carolyn Porter. William Faulkner : Lives and Legacies, Oxford University Press USA – OSO, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=416050.
Created from huntercollege-ebooks on 2020-09-03 10:39:12.

Burton, Stacy. “Benjy, Narrativity, and the Coherence of Compson History.” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, 7.2 (1995) 207-228. JSTOR. 31 October

Faulkner, William. “Interview by Jean Stein.” The Paris Review. New York: 1956. Online.
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