Darl

While Darl seems like the static and isolated older brother, resentful of the his mother's love for her favorite son, he embodies a dynamic position in the novel that helps translate the overall theme in the novel. The second oldest of Addie’s children, he is highly perceptive and sensitive to those around him. A Great War veteran, rejected by his mother, and jealous of her favoritism for Jewel, Darl is a pivotal character who links the cosmopolitan with the rural, the absurd with the isolated, and subjectivity with reliability. From his isolated state, Darl is inwardly and outwardly aware, yet his knowledge acts as a Burden to himself and to those around him. But, as we see later on the novel, Darl's insight is contagious for other characters and thus, his looniness, as subjective as it seems, appears to have some weight for the reader. It is therefore no surprise that the Bundrens so readily send him off to an asylum in Jackson. Darl is not only an economic and social liability for his family, he is also that figure who embodies chaos, and that for Bundren family and the reader is an uncomfortable thing.

Darl's narratives have a cosmopolitan tone to his rural and isolated voice. He therefore escapes the isolation of not just his narrative, but also the isolated location of the Bundren family. For instance, "A feather dropped near the front door will rise and brush along the ceiling, slanting backward, until it reaches the down-turning current at the back door" (20). The clairvoyance in Darl's language--depicting the fate of a feather-- defines his paradoxical position in the novel as a subjective and objective narrator. This in-between voice further flexes its authority with the objective image of Jewel’s lofty hat 15 feet behind and above him (3). But, it is a reminder that Darl is biased with his obsession and resentment towards his brother Jewel. The pattern of his subjective nature in his monologues is found in such respect for Cash and hatred for Jewel, “[...] a good carpenter, Cash is” (5). The reader’s first glimpse of Jewel is quite the opposite,“[...] pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face[...]”(4). Here, the inanimate description of his brother bound by the repetition of “wood,” alludes to Darl’s negative and subjective feelings for Jewel. For Darl, Jewel is “[...] a head taller than any of the rest of us, always was”(17). This animosity helps shape the novel and Darl's character as a whole, where the reader receives the dirt on Jewel’s selfish endeavor to buy a horse, as well as allusions to Jewel as the bastard in the family, “ ‘Jewel,’ I say, ‘whose son are you?’”(212). Darl’s obsession for Jewel, is found in the structure of his monologues where 12 out of his 19 meditations end on the thought of his brother. Further, his neglect to share his feelings on the death of Addie while concentrating on Jewel’s mourning signifies an absurd quality to Darl’s persona (Hayes 51-2).

Darl’s attempt to sabotage Addie’s dying wish does lead the reader to think that it is a direct action against his younger brother Jewel. But, there is something absurd in Jewel’s relentless desire to keep to his mother’s wish as well. After all, a dying wish is a laughable idea. Therefore, one cannot help but sympathize with Darl’s entropic action against the family’s journey. The reader sympathizes for Darl because he casts a blaring light on the inane qualities of life that exist today--money, sex, time. For instance, Darl’s third person narration carries a timeless weight on the reader and other characters in the novel, “A nickel has a woman on one side and a buffalo on the other; two faces and no back[...] Darl had a little spy-glass he got in France at the war. In it it had a woman and a pig with two backs and no face. I know what that is. ‘Is that why you are laughing Darl?”(254). Eerily speaking in third person, these penultimate words signify a base integration of the novel’s course of events. Ridiculous, yet poignant, the imagery of money’s deception alongside sex as an animalistic action displays a deeper understanding of his connection and understanding to the world around him. This prophetic voice bleeds into the characterization of Cash, where he himself meditates on the different worlds that accept and deny the individual, "This world is not his world; this life his life"(261). Here, Cash's voice is oddly similar to Darl's prophetic tone. While Cash alludes to the subjective world that engulfs a life, he proves a clairvoyance or a wisdom with the world that surrounds him and his brother. It is this insight that defines Darl not only as an isolated character, but one who is connected to the world, and siblings in the family such as Vardaman, Dewey Dell, or Cash.

The last scene of the novel, where the new Mrs. Bundren is introduced, coherently links Darl’s insane dialogue, “yes yes yes yes yes” to his isolated monologues (253). Although seemingly insane, Darl discloses subtle, yet important details for the reader. For instance, Darl describes the family’s position in the novel [...] tilting a little down the hill, as our house does[...](19). As the reader recounts the absurd downhill journey for the Bundren family, one can conclude that Darl’s constant awareness of his surroundings, makes him a reliable narrator. Further, the dark tone of Darl’s monologues makes his and his sibling’s character easier to understand and grasp for the careful reader. For instance, Darl characterizes Addie as “[...] a lonley woman, lonely with her pride[...], refusing to let her lie in the same earth with those Bundrens”(22-3). From the pronoun “those,” Darl dismisses himself from the family, yet he himself echoes Addie’s selfish tone the reader hears in her single monologue of the novel. While Darl is isolated, he is at the same time connected. And because it is uncertain that he knows this connection and isolation in his character, it defines his reliability as a narrator.

**Darl and Tragedy** Hyper-aware, and just as enigmatic as his mother Darl is a Shakespearean figure for Faulkner. While the critic Aaron Moore insists with some existential authority that Darl is authentic, calling upon philsophies from Camus and Sartre, it is important to claim Darl more as a reliable voice into the modern world than an authentic one. As Moore suggests, Darl’s authenticity ignites sympathy from the reader. This authenticity is bound by, avoiding “[...] bad faith (self-deception)” (14). But, this implies that Darl is conscientious of his isolated and connected nature to the world around him. Because Darl questions his existence, with an“[...] acute ability to step out of himself [...],” the reader can trust his character and his opinions of the Bundren family(14). For Moore, one’s identity is merely a sum of his actions and nothing more. Therefore, at Darl's very core, one’s identity is empty, hallow--nothing (14-15). This philosophy echoes a famous line in Shakespeare’s //As You Like It,// where //“all the world’s a stage”// and an individual's identity is marked by their daily actions and roles (2.7). That said, Darl is not a maniac, nor is he necessarily authentic. It is because he occupies a space that we all endure, between the objectivity and the subjectivity. While we use subjective experience to form an identity, there is an objective, Shakespearean knowledge about identity and its hollow core. Because Darl is suspended between these two states, he is a reliable character who questions his role in the novel’s course of events and the “[...] illusion of the mind”(77). It is this hollowness in Darl’s allusions that reverberates with the novel's theme of liminality, or uncertainty in the face of what appears to be subjective and objective. The space between objectivity and subjectivity is, as chaotic as it seems, an order which the reader sympathizes with. Because Darl's identity is as hallow our own, because his subjective meditations are mixed with an objectivity, Darl is not necessarily an authoritative voice, but a reliable tone for the novel.

Works Cited

Hayes, Elizabeth. “Tension between Darl and Jewel” The Southern LIterary Journal 24.2 (1992): 49-61 JSTOR. Web. 17 October 2013

Moore, Aaron. “Faulkner and Humanity’s Desire to be Solid as a Thing” MS Thesis. Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences, 2009. []. Web. 17 October 2013

Shakespeare, William. The Literature Network. 2000. []. Web. 17 October 2013