I think that As I Lay Dying is true, essentially. It exaggerates situations that are a part of our world in every day, common people. Horrible things happen to people and people do horrible things. This novel delves so deep into a familial ties that it shows every strength and weakness possible.
Faulkner takes the Bundrens on a long, winding journey that symbolizes the failings and weaknesses of the family. And it is so awful, it's funny - like when your funny bone gets hit and it's painful, but for some reason you find yourself laughing. But I see that as more of an entertaining aspect, used to make the book interesting rather than some long dreary story about a sad, broken family.
But if you exclude the ridiculousness that cloaks the situations, these are real life ordeals. There are women who have children, but lack any kind of motherly love for them. They, mentally, lack any kind of bond with their babies that is supposedly engrained in females from creation. It's sad, incredibly so for the children, but it happens, more than people would like to think. Siblings can actually hate each other. This is especially true, or common maybe, in situations where one sibling believes that the other has unfairly taken something away from them that was of high, personal importance. Dewey Dell hates Darl because she believes he came between Lafe and her. Whether it's an appropriate or well thought out incrimination, it's how she feels, and these situations happen all the time. Feelings are hurt and bridges are burned, and blood no longer matters. Addie's situation is very common. Woman marry men, especially in the old days but even now, without any inklings of love, thus when there is an offense, or 'violation', against her it is an easy path to single-minded hatred. There are people like Anse who are so wholly involved with themselves that even when they are following through with a loved one's dying wish, it is still about him. The whole trip was always about his conscious being cleared and his wish to buy teeth. It was always about him. His children clearly had problems, and he only thought of how they were a burden to him. He couldn't even mourn the loss of his wife properly because he was so caught up in his own problems. And there are most definitely people like they in the world.
All of these, plus more, are unfortunately common situations. I think that Faulkner just exaggerates them to the point of humor and ridiculousness that it becomes hard to imagine anything like it. I mean, come on, dragging a dead body for miles and miles in a slow, unstable wagon? Pretty close to becoming farce purely from exaggeration.
But beautiful? Not so much. Unless it's to say that: Faulkner explores the internal faults and crumbling relationships of a family, thus magnifying humanity to an up-close view of something so raw and honest that it's beautiful. Humanity is beautiful an abstract, close-one-eye-and-squint-the-other kind of way. This novel is just brutal in so many ways that it's hard to say that its beautiful. Honestly, any novel that has a young boy drilling holes in his dead mother's face is already a million steps back from beautiful, whether it explores the reality of humanity or not. I just can't see it as beautiful and I can't say that I believe Faulkner was going for beauty either. He doesn't give beautiful moments like any other novel would. There is no shining beacon of hope anywhere or any kind of moments of physical beauty, only mud and the smell of a long dead mother. There is only one place where a revelation is shone upon the reader like a light from above... and it's about insanity. Maybe one could argue that it's not beautiful in the common, mundane sense, but I just can't see it. Plus, I don't think a novel needs to be beautiful, sometimes the things we take in need to be gritty and truthful and raw. And As I Lay Dying is all of these, even though they sometimes get overshadowed by the ridiculousness and preposterous situations the Bundrens find themselves in.
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