“As I Lay Dying” is very much concerned with the problem posed by “words”. This issue show up at different levels. The most obvious one is the contrast between the factual reality characters experience and the ways they react to it. The gap between the external world and the one expressed by the interior monologues is huge and its expressed not only in what they think about and what they actually say; but also in the way they express it. Faulkner has no problem in granting the interior voices a verbal capacity–a vocabulary–way higher from what should be expected from white trash. He seems to be ready to give up realism rules in order to express that the inner world of those people is a serious reality. Continue reading
