William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and in Virginia Woolf’s A Mark on the

William Faulkners As I coiffure Dying and in Virginia Woolfs A Mark on the Wall - Subjective Narratives in Modernist Texts Like many other modernist texts, William Faulkners As I Lay Dying employs many unreliable narrators to reveal the progression of the novel. One of the most interesting of these narrators is the youngest Bundren child, Vardaman. Like the rest of his family, Vardaman is mentally unstable, but his condition is magnified due to this lack of understand of life and death. Because he doesnt grasp this basic concept, Vardamans attempts to understand his mothers death are some of the most compelling cheek of the novel. Over the course of the book, Vardaman attempts to rationalize his mothers death through animals, particularly a fish. Through these rationalizations, Vardaman comes to a seemingly logical conclusion nigh the nature of life and death. While these conclusions seem perfectly logical to Vardaman, they are nonsensical to the reader. This concept h elps illustrate the use of subjective narrators in As I Lay Dying, and defines it as a Modernist text. Vardamans first narrative comes right after his mother Addies death. Frightened, he runs out of the house and tries to rationalize what has effective happened. He describes his earlier chore of gutting and chopping up a fish in the yard and then directly relates this experience to Addie If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can feel the nucleotide shake when he walks on it that came and did it (53-54). Here, Vardaman is confused as to what exactly happened in Addies bedroom. He portrays the before and after of the fish, being fish... ... of the text. The use of the subjective narrative in Modernist literature is one component of the movements radical break from previous literary periods. The subjective, psychologically oriented narratives in As I Lay Dying and A Mark on the Wall are illustrative of this radical literary change. Vardaman Bundrens irregular logic conciliate his mothers death, Virginia Woolfs meandering stream of consciousness narratives help define their texts as key elements of this groundbreaking movement. Works CitedFaulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. New York Random House, 1985. Woolf, Virginia. A Mark on the Wall. The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Twentieth Century. 7th ed. Vol. 2C. Ed M.H. Abrams. New York Norton, 2000. 2143-2148 5 Hill