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

William Faulkners As I Lay Dying and in Virginia Woolfs A oppose on the Wall - Subjective Narratives in Modernist Texts Like many different modernist texts, William Faulkners As I Lay Dying employs many punic narrators to reveal the progression of the novel. One of the most inte domicileing 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 catch of life and closing. Because he doesnt grasp this basic concept, Vardamans attempts to attend his mothers death are some of the most induce aspect 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 crystal clear conclusion about the nature of life and death. While these conclusions seem perfectly logical to Vardaman, they are nonsensical to the reader. This concep t helps illustrate the use of ingrained 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 just happened. He describes his earlier business of gutting and chopping up a fish in the yard and then direct 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 try on the bed and her face and them and I can feel the floor conjure 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 ingrained 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 corr ect on the Wall are illustrative of this radical literary change. Vardaman Bundrens illegal logic reconciling his mothers death, Virginia Woolfs meandering catamenia of consciousness narratives help define their texts as key elements of this groundbreaking movement. whole kit CitedFaulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. rude(a) 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