When I started out as an English major in college, I was quickly enamored with William Faulkner's usage of language. Reading As I Lay Dying, I learned that fiction doesn't have to exist in a realm of plain language, but rather it can also incorporate the same type of dense language that you see being employed by poets. From there, I fell in love with other authors like Ann Pancake, and more recently Aimee Bender, Ben Marcus, and Ed Abbey. The dense language writing style, has led me to constantly look for ways to pare down my own fiction, cut out passivity, and make sure that every word's weight counts both aurally and textually.
Today's essay comes from Faulkner's collection of short stories. In it, I talk about his handling of death in two very different ways. What most impresses me with Faulkner's work in these stories is that he can express and capture the ambiguity of death in two very different ways (body and spirit) without sacrificing the power of each story.
The Mystery of Death in Faulkner's Fiction
The final section of William Faulkner's Collected Stories entitled Beyond presents itself with six stories exploring themes and topics either existing outside of his usual motifs, or revolving about supernatural occurrence. The theme of death reoccurs very differently in two stories from this section, “Beyond,” and “Carcassonne.” Both stories take the reader outside of the realm of the living and into a disorienting and distorted view of death and the beyond. Furthermore, each story focuses upon a different portion of the body in its post-death journey: “Beyond” explores the soul, while “Carcassonne” remains closer to the body itself.
Within “Beyond,” the main character, the Judge, dies in bed before the doctor, and transcends into a sort of limbo where other dead souls go to meet and spend time with each other. Faulkner carries the reader into this world along with the Judge without overtly mentioning his death. Rather, he meticulously feeds the reader context clues. At first he found himself unable to communicate to the others in his room as Chorly wailed over the death (Faulkner 782). Then as he left the house, his clothes magically appeared on his body: “he realized that he was still in his pajamas, so he buttoned his overcoat... 'Now, if i Just had my....' He looked down at his feet....He looked at his shoes...He touched his hat...He clasped his ebony stick” (Faulkner 782-783). And with the clothes magically appearing, Faulkner has established that the soul of the Judge has now separated from his body, and appears as he would in his own mind.
Furthermore, as the limbo scene develops, Faulkner controls the language in such a way that the Judge slowly surmises that he's surrounded by other dead people, but in the same sense, he doesn't let any character directly refer to themselves as being dead. The first man the Judge meets refers to his death in abstraction, “'I had to do it...I was late. That's why I was driving fast. A child ran into the road. I was going too fast to stop. So I had to turn'” (Faulkner 784). And then later, the reader is fully clued in to this limbo setting when the man says “'Look for him here'” to the Judge, referring to the Judge's long dead son (Faulkner 785).
Once the limbo plane is fully established, Faulkner establishes it as a place of infinite existence, where scores of souls remain, waiting for loved ones and spending time with them before proceeding on to their final fates. However since the Judge, “detested crowds,” “came here to escape someone; not to find anyone,” (Faulkner 783, 784-785), and realized that this land remained static and unchanging when he learned that his son's pony “was just the right size for him,” he returns to the corporeal realm; returns to his body so that he could “proceed” onwards. (Faulkner 795, 798).
Through “Beyond,” Faulkner establishes a direct connection between the body and the soul even in death. This connection further is built upon within “Carcassonne.” Within “Carcassonne,” Faulkner has created two narrators, each a different aspect of the same being. One, the skeleton of the man, and the other his mind and soul. The mind, believes itself “on a buckskin pony...galloping up the hill and right off into the high heaven of the world” (Faulkner 895), but the skeleton “beneath an unrolled strip of tarred roofing,” only groans at the mind's attempt to leave, thinking of the pony as “destinationless,” and traveling “toward the blue precipice never gained” (Faulkner 895). In essence, the man remains motionless both physically and spiritually, though both dream of being free of their terrestrial connections, and connection from each other While the spirit tries to gallop away from the skeleton, the skeleton dreams of “swaying caverns and the grottoes [of the sea], and his body lay on the rippled floor, tumbling peacefully to the wavering echoes of the tides” (Faulkner 899).
However, while they dream of being separate, they remain conjoined, the skeleton grudgingly assisting the spirit by supplying the word “Chamfron,” as the spirit tries to describe his escape (Faulkner 899). In addition, the skeleton, knowing that it has died because of “that steady decay which had set up within his body on the day of his birth” (Faulkner 896-897) is forced to constantly stare at the spirit on his horse. The skeleton is forced to watch a spirit gallop onward to nowhere, not realizing that the body has died: “He could see the saddlegirth and the soles of the riders stirruped feet...thundering along in two halves and not knowing it, fused still in the rhythm of accrued momentum” (Faulkner 898).
In a similar, but slightly different way, Faulkner communicates the necessary connection between spirit and terrestrial body during death within “Carcassonne.” Whereas in “Beyond,” The Judge spiritually left his body only to return later before accepting death, the spirit and skeleton of “Carcassonne,” seem all too ready to fly apart as fast as possible, but as the story draws to a close, and the skeleton helps the spirit “perform something,” by supplying “Chamfon,” the two unite so that they may travel onward to whatever eternity awaits them (Faulkner 898-899). Through both stories, Faulkner establishes that the spirit doesn't just float away from the body upon death, but rather it lingers, or tries to escape, before it realizes that it needs to return to the body to transcend through the final gate of death.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. “Beyond.” Collected Stories. New York: Vintage, 1995. 781-798.
Faulkner, William. “Carcassonne.” Collected Stories. New York: Vintage, 1995. 895-900.
