William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and in Virginia Woolf’s...

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and in Virginia Woolf’s A Mark on the Wall - Subjective Narratives in Modernist Texts Like many other modernist texts, William Faulkner’s 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 understanding of life and death. Because he doesn’t grasp this basic concept, Vardaman’s attempts to understand his mother’s death are some of the most compelling aspect of the novel. Over the course of the book, Vardaman attempts to rationalize his mother’s death through†¦show more content†¦He then reasons that â€Å"he,† or Peabody, is the one who has done this to Addie and retaliates: â€Å"He kilt her. He kilt her† (Faulkner, 54). Like the other Bundren narrators of this novel, Vardaman often uses the word â€Å"it† in his narratives instead of fully enumerating his intent. This pa ssage is no exception; especially when Vardaman is describing Peabody leaving Addie’s room. This confusion with presence and being is continued in Vardaman’s second narrative where he tries to associate Addie’s death with other deaths he has experienced in the past – of rabbits and possums: I thought it was her, but it was not. It was not my mother. She went away when the other one laid down in her bed and drew the quilt up. She went away. â€Å"Did she go as far as town?† â€Å"She went further than town.† â€Å"Did all those rabbits and possums go further than town?† God made the rabbits and possums†¦Why must He make a different place for them to go if she is just like the rabbit. (Faulkner, 66) This passage shows that Vardaman has never learned about death, and simply lied to when things died –â€Å"they went to town.† These lies only perpetuate his irrational logic regarding Addie’s death. As this particular narrative progresses, Vardaman determines that Addie is not a rabbit or a possum because she is in the coffin (box) and â€Å"Cash nails the box up,† signaling that she is not going to town,