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

William Faulkners As I get destruction and in Virginia Woolfs A Mark on the Wall - Subjective Narratives in Modernist Texts Like many other modernist texts, William Faulkners As I take down Dying employs many unreliable narrators to reveal the progression of the novel. One of the close interesting of these narrators is the youngest Bundren child, Vardaman. Like the rest of his family, Vardaman is mentally unstable, but his condition is exaggerated due to this lack of understanding of sprightliness and death. Because he doesnt kitchen range this basic opinion, Vardamans attempts to understand his mothers death argon some of the most compelling aspect of the novel. Over the course of the book, Vardaman attempts to cut shoot his mothers death through animals, particularly a fish. d unmatchable these rationalizations, Vardaman comes to a seemingly logical conclusion about the nature of life and death. While these conclusions seem perfectly logical to Vardaman, they a re nonsensical to the reader. This concept helps illustrate the use of subjective narrators in As I Lay Dying, and defines it as a Modernist text. Vardamans first narrative comes right after(prenominal) his mother Addies death. Frightened, he runs out of the house and tries to rationalize what has and 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 groundwork hear the bed and her face and them and I can feel the floor 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, beingness fish... ... of the text. The use of the subjective narrative in Modernist literature is one component of the movements perfect break from previous literary periods. The subjective, psychol ogically oriented narratives in As I Lay Dying and A Mark on the Wall are illustrative of this radical literary change. Vardaman Bundrens irregular logic reconciling 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. saucy 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