My First Attempt at A Decent Analysis of American Lit

I know some of you have heard about my struggle with this latest paper. Here's how it turned out:

Traits of Modernist Fiction: How to Be Alone

The tumultuous period in American History from 1914 – 1945, marked by events like World War I and the Great Depression, gave rise to writers using non-traditional literary techniques that they felt captured the isolation and alienation of the period. Modernist fiction, influenced by the Great War and unstable economy, uses techniques that mirror the effect on individuals as the world made and broke alliances, and leapt away from centuries-old traditions in art and economy. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are two writers of this period whose fiction contains examples of modernist characteristics such as stream of consciousness narrative, multiple and unreliable narrators, as well as narrative and characters that use language to commute around a topic without discussing it directly; this commonly referred to as Hemingway’s theory of omission. These writers used their special ability with these techniques to promote ideas and experiences of alienation.

Although this was a time of unprecedented change in American culture, something like stream of consciousness writing was not new entirely. However, it was unfamiliar territory for writers like Faulkner and Hemingway, who would come to master stream of consciousness writing in their careers. Modernists used stream of consciousness to alienate characters from their setting and the action occurring around them, and expose the rift in characters’ interrelatedness. It is difficult to make sense of a character’s fragmentary thoughts, due to the abrupt way that stream of consciousness writing starts and stops, often with no guiding demarcation in the text.

William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying is comprised almost fully of stream of consciousness writing, and maintains the theme of isolation through the many characters unique perspectives. For instance, Dewey Dell’s narrative sharply transitions from describing the land presently around her, to an interior monologue about her dead mother, which leads up to the phrase, “It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon” (1736). The text moves from a traditional style of narrative to the disjointed form that commonly comprises stream of consciousness writing. Faulkner manipulates the free form of stream of consciousness writing to include dense prose that may not show any similarity to their voice. This happens when Dewey Dell’s chapter begins to weave in and out of her inner thoughts into philosophical imagery and metaphor concerning the “womb of time” and “bones, the hard girdle in which lie in outraged entrails of events” (1736). These disconnections are flanked by lines of text that imply where the character is and what they are looking at, “The sign board comes in sight” and “We turn into Tulls lane” (1736, 37). By presenting Dewey Dell both in a distinct setting and within her own thoughts Faulkner presents a character able to move through space and time without entirely coherent transition; she is a character that is present in the plot, but also does not belong there, for in her mind she is isolated from the purpose and obvious meaning of the journey to Jefferson. Thus, the theme of isolation is served; the broken thoughts and actions alienate the reader form the plot or point of the novel.

Hemingway also used stream of consciousness narrative in his story “The Snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro,” but in his story passages that use this effect are italicized and introduced by statements that inform the reader the character is remembering a past event. More importantly, the stream of consciousness writing, which frequently interrupts the plot, defers the reader from the disaster at hand, Harry’s imminent death. The characters in “Snows” avoid much direct talk about Harry dying, and word death is mostly omitted from their dialogue. This also happens in Dying, especially when the characters are discussing Addie’s death. As Cash saws planks for her coffin outside of the room she is dying in, other characters in the novel can’t even bring themselves to use the word coffin. Early in the novel Jewel thinks of her coffin as “that goddamn box” (1699), and according to Darl, when Jewel talks about the coffin, “does not even say the word” (1700). The characters are separated from the reality of the plot through the removal of direct language to communicate about it. By not even allowing Jewel to use the word coffin in either his thoughts or dialogue, Faulkner stresses the idea of individuals detached from reality.

In addition to stream of consciousness narrative and omission, “Snows” utilizes multiple narrators to add to the theme of separation. At the end of the story, when Harry is facing death, his narrative breaks off and a new one takes it place. This new narrative contains no stream of consciousness writing, and doesn’t appear to be in the cynical voice of Harry, the original narrator. It describes Harry being rescued by someone he knows, and being airlifted out of his camp. This narrative begins to reveal a happy ending for Harry, who has been facing destruction for the entire piece. Yet something is awry, for the action dissolves into a view of the “great, high, and unbelievably white…square top of Kilimanjaro” where Harry “knew…he was going” (1863, 64). This is where the passage abruptly ends, and then returns to the African camp where Helen discovers Harry dead on the cot. The insertion of a new narrative in a different voice is disconcerting, and presents a narrator that is unreliable and deceptive. It is the phantom of the familiar convention of the happy ending, and Hemingway implies that happy endings are not the stuff of the Modernist era, and smack of the quickly fading glory of the past. The juxtaposition of the new narrator against the old also highlights Helen’s uncertain future. He confidently returns to the despair of Harry’s death and Helen’s isolation in Africa, an unfamiliar country where she will continue on alone.

Utilizing an unreliable narrator is an achievement in “Snows,” but it is Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying that provides a superlative example of using multiple narrators to tell a story. There are fifteen different narrative voices in the novel, all of which weave in and out of their thoughts and the action of the novel. In this way the same event in the plot can be retold by different narrators having a different experience of the same event, as well as prohibiting an event from having any single significance; meaning is endlessly deferred through the host of narrators. A good example of this is when Darl and Jewel must take the wagon to procure three dollars. The decision to take the wagon and get the money is told through three different perspectives, Darl’s narration has him conversing with Anse pragmatically; he reminds Anse that the trip “means three dollars” and that Anse needs to make a decision quickly, so that they “can get there and get a load on before dark” (1700). Darl describes Jewel as emotionally distraught by the thought of leaving Addie at death’s door, and upset by the events that are surrounding her death, such as Cash’s obnoxious construction of Addie’s coffin. In Darl’s narrative Jewel declares that Addie wouldn’t be declining so rapidly to her death if “everybody wasn’t burning hell to get her there” (1701). When they decide to go ahead with the trip to get the three dollars, Darl tells that “Jewel…goes on around the house” while Darl proceeds to “enter the hall” (1701). So according to Darl, he himself convinces Anse that they should make the trip to get the money while Jewel protests, and that Darl enters the house before they leave.

The story changes significantly when retold by Cora. Cora’s narration tells that the event is Jewel’s idea, and that Jewel leaves Addie behind because he is not going to “miss a chance to make that extra three dollars” (1702). She goes on to explain that “Mr. Tull says that Darl asked them to wait” and that “Darl almost begged them on his hands and knees not to force him to leave her in her condition” (1702). This is a drastic difference in perspective, as Darl mentions none of this in his previous narrative. Cora justifies Darl’s actions by saying he’s unlike his lazy, money-grubbing father and brother, and perceiving that there is “true love” between Darl and Addie (1703). Cora explains that Darl came to the house to say goodbye to Addie with a “heart too full for words” (1703). Darl’s narrative mentions nothing of his having an understanding with his mother, or of his feeling true love for her, and it certainly doesn’t include him begging Jewel and Anse to let him stay behind.

Dewey Dell’s narrative concerning this event confounds the story further. She concurs with Cora’s story that Darl came to the house, but that he simply said, “she is going to die” (1704). Dewey Dell and Darl have an exchange of words, but this dialogue is questionable because just before this Dewey Dell confesses that she and Darl communicate “without the words” (1704). This implies that the conversation narrated by Dewey Dell may not have occurred at all. This conversation is left out of Darl and Cora’s chapters, but all three have discrepancies, so the validity of the plot presented is compromised.

By using three different narrators to convey the particulars of this brief event, three different stories emerge, all of which can’t be true, or have occurred in the unstable reality of the plot. Faulkner never deviates from character narrative, but leaves it up to the reader to decide which narrator to trust. Thus the characters are alienated from reality by their different perspectives, and the reader is alienated from the story, because it lacks a narrator that who tells the truth of the story. The reader can only vaguely assert that this is a novel about a family who takes a wagon trip to a neighboring city to bury their mother. Other facts of the plot hold temporary and shifting meanings, undulating as they pass through the mind of multiple narrators. When they tell their stories through an internalized stream of consciousness, they present a subjective reality that lies outside of time and coherent connection. The impression this conveys is that reality is ultimately subjective, and that individual perspectives do not make up a collective experience of verifiable truth, but form a disjointed and fragmented experience of reality which can not be relied on for accuracy, for the characters are only true to themselves.

Significant modernist writers like Faulkner and Hemingway were able to reflect the experience of estrangement and detachment in their fiction, and characters in “Snows” and Dying are left to trudge on alone in a world of deferred meaning and unreliable truth. Harry realizes, as do many characters in modern literature when they find themselves in tragic situations, that “the people are all gone” (1862); by the end of Dying Darl has been institutionalized and abandoned. Those who remain exist disaffected by their losses, and their loyalties to conventions are shaken. By using these techniques modernist writers were able to preserve the spirit of the modernist age in literature that continues to invoke a spirit of change in direction away from literary convention, and explore the outer reaches of cultural uncertainty.