Model
Digital Document
Publisher
Florida Atlantic University
Description
In the reading of William Faulkner's The Sound and the
Fury and As I Lay Dying, the reader's preconceived ideas
about sanity and insanity change through identification
with each character. Both novels are told from multiple
points of view. The reader's transition from one section
of the novel into the next reflects crossing a threshold
beyond which definitions of sanity must be reformulated.
This creative process, mimetic of the writer-text relationship,
leads to acceptance of all states of consciousness,
which are represented by sections of the novel, as
part of the whole. Insanity becomes the fragmen t ation
between each section, or state of consciousness, and the
whole. This fragmentation appears in characters as hate,
despair, and rage. Sanity emerges as wholeness and
integration, represented in the novel and actualized in
the reader as acceptance and love.
Fury and As I Lay Dying, the reader's preconceived ideas
about sanity and insanity change through identification
with each character. Both novels are told from multiple
points of view. The reader's transition from one section
of the novel into the next reflects crossing a threshold
beyond which definitions of sanity must be reformulated.
This creative process, mimetic of the writer-text relationship,
leads to acceptance of all states of consciousness,
which are represented by sections of the novel, as
part of the whole. Insanity becomes the fragmen t ation
between each section, or state of consciousness, and the
whole. This fragmentation appears in characters as hate,
despair, and rage. Sanity emerges as wholeness and
integration, represented in the novel and actualized in
the reader as acceptance and love.
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