Consistent with the growing influence of modernist thought affecting American literature during the 20th century, William Faulkner was willing to exercise more experimental narrative techniques and styles. His novel resulting from this experiment, As I Lay Dying, demonstrates his critique of humanity as a desperately poor but inflexible communicator. The very disjointed Bundren family, along with the handful of onlookers and strangers who also attend Addie Bundren's funeral, form an equally disjointed patchwork of perspectives, opinions, long internal monologues and terse conversations . The resulting synthesized narrative is a literary panorama that reveals all the overlapping layers and niches and creates a complete story of the Bundren family's journey. Surprisingly, this story of a poor Southern family spending five days burying their deceased mother is rich and vibrant, featuring intense emotional turmoil and the testing of family bonds, all hidden within the mind and the thoughts of the respective characters. Ultimately, the greatest tragedy of As I Lay Dying is not the death of Addie Bundren, but the pain and resentment the Bundrens endure due to their inability to communicate with each other, their true thoughts and reflections. being related only in their respective stories. sections.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Faulkner's most significant depiction of humanity's inability to truly communicate is his implementation of fifteen narrators distinct across fifty-nine distinct and overlapping narrative sections, displayed freely. the misunderstandings, delusions, and silent reflections that lead directly to all of the Bundren family's public and personal dilemmas. Each with their own voice, desires, and worldviews, the novel's different narrators are distinct and diverse. The members of the Bundren family are particularly divergent in their communication styles. The only characteristic they share is that they refuse to truly express themselves verbally to each other. The seven Bundren express themselves almost exclusively in the novel's narrative through rich, personal mental accounts of their impressions, feelings, and motivations that remain largely unknown to other members of the family. Cash, for example, is often ignored and overlooked despite its inherent coolness. For example: “I told them that if they wanted it to be portable and mounted on a scale, they should do it” (165). Here, Cash expresses his frustration at his family's ignorance. Being the most logical and adept of the Bundrens, Cash had easily foreseen the problems during the river crossing, but was completely ignored by the entire family. Faulkner even goes so far as to end his story in the middle of a sentence. Obviously, this act of pure disrespect toward the narrator reflects the lack of respect Cash receives when he attempts to communicate. Rather than averting calamity altogether, the Bundren's deaf ears and deaf souls result in disaster; Cash is quickly isolated and controlled by both family blood and the turbulent waters of the river. The only one who seriously listens to Cash is himself. This isolation is true for all of the novel's respective narrators. Each speaker is effectively locked within their own mind, represented through their respective narrative sections. Progress only happens if there appear to be shared opinions amid all this communicative ambiguity. Cash develops this idea aboutDaryl's incarceration: “Sometimes I don't know who has the right to say when a man is crazy and when he is not. Sometimes I think none of us are completely crazy and none of us are completely sane until all of us talk to him that way. It's like it's not really what a man does, but it's how the majority of people look at him when he does it. Because Jewel is too hard on him” (233). Indeed, Cash concludes that reason, and hence all conceptions of truth and reality, are relative to the perspectives through which it is observed and communicated. Darl's declaration of madness is merely the result of other perspectives, such as those of Jewel and the rest of the family, dominating his own. This shaping of what is considered the Bundrens' reality is illustrated by the labyrinth of individual narrative sections that actively bend and rewrite their story as it unfolds. Clearly, the method by which humanity perceives and evaluates truth is far too fickle and isolated for effective communication, especially for the Bundren. Furthermore, Faulkner's juxtaposition of a rich, fluid stream of passages of consciousness and relatively abrupt vocal exchanges devalues ​​much of the tiny verbal communication present in the novel. The different narrative sections contain few conversations between the characters. However, compared to the abundance of resonant internal monologues that make up the majority of the story's progression, these fleeting bursts of speech lose much of their relevance. For example, as several of the older men in the novel gather around Cash and discuss his first broken leg, two distinct conversations, one internal and one external, are visible. Tull comments, probably in his mind, "I don't mind people falling." It's the cotton and corn that bothers me. Peabody doesn't care about people falling either. And that, Doc? (90). Here, Tull, in an almost joking manner, ignores Cash's three-story fall from the top of a church. He claims that his and Peabody's profession took precedence over Cash's leg only moments, in fact, after Armstid mentioned the possibility of Cash being bedridden because of the accident. The difference between these two statements is that Armstid had spoken out loud and Tull had kept his true thoughts to himself. Tull then sets off on a free, flowing narrative that Faulkner takes pains to fully italicize, indicating an acute separation between Tull's thoughts and the actual conversation taking place. In this moment, Tull is an example of how strongly the novel's characters protect their inner thoughts from those who may listen. As a result of this behavior, vast reserves of sincere thoughts turn into hollow bits of dialogue. This communication is barely enough for a family in crisis and leads to many fatal mistakes and misconceptions. Finally, Faulkner's final critique against communication in the novel comes from Addie's scathing critique of language, the vehicle through which all communication has thus far been established. In her narrative section alone, Addie Bundren attacks the use of words as a legitimate method of communication. Above all, when she mentions Anse and the word “love”, she spits, “I knew that this word was like the others: just a form to fill a gap; that when the time came, you would not need a word for it, any more than for pride or fear” (171). For Addie, words never quite “fit” the concept or emotion they are trying to contain and convey..