As I Lay Dying Compare And Contrast

The line between sane and insane is obscure and depends on each person’s perspective. William Faulkner depicts the fine line of being mentally stable through the Bundren family in As I Lay Dying. After the death of their mother, each child deals with grief in different manners- from suppressing it, becoming obsessive in a new task, or getting caught up in philosophical thought. Each character has their quirks and flaws and altogether are viewed as an aberrant family. Two flawed siblings that both react to their mother’s death very differently are Cash and Darl. Cash is introduced with obsessive tendencies, while Darl is the intellectual one. However, after many hardships the reader's first impressions shift and the characters begin to sway

in between rational and senseless thought. Faulkner depicts the ambiguous line between the two states in order to display how close together they are and how there is a bit of madness in everyone.
Initial impressions are often faulty, especially depending on when the assessment occurs and who is the one judging. The first time the reader hears from Cash Bundren he is solely listing details about his mother’s coffin and attempts to make a convincing argument about why he “made it on the bevel” (77). His tone and thoughts are jumbled and irregular as he lists thirteen detached sentences- the sixth point is solely “Except.” and the eighth is “Animal magnetism.”, making the reader question his intentions, intellect, and even sanity (78). His neurotic tendencies about his mother’s coffin continues when Cash is the narrator for the second time, repeating “balance” five times in half of a page and ending the anecdote, “If they want it to tote and ride on a balance, they will have” having no resolution to his point and depicting Cash’s peculiar line of thought. Cash is unable to effectively explain his emotions and articulate anything of importance. He is extremely caught up in one task, building the coffin, and rambles with little emotion; a characteristic found in people who are unstable.
Throughout the novel the narrator's shift- giving depth and variation in opinions on the circumstances- however, Cash is unable to verbalize what is going on around him. The third narration from Cash is similar to the second as it is short and fragmented. It ends, “I told them that if they wanted it to tote and ride on a balance, they would have to” (157). Repeating his earlier point but in past tense. After being washed down the river in a near death experience, Cash is still unable to deliver any further insight into the incident. His inability rises the question of if he is intelligent and unaware of the severity of situations around him or if he is just so consumed in his actions that he doesn't see the importance in others and the world around him.
In comparison, Darl is the head narrator and initially appears to be the most sane member of the Bundren family.

His initial monologue is concise and insightful as he describes every detail of his surroundings. Darl, in comparison to Cash, describes the situation, sound, and imagery around him more than his own thoughts. His language is clear and he does not have as strong of a southern accent as his siblings. He immediately stands out among his family as the more sensible character. He is an ominous character that can chronical a moment in time, like his mother’s death, without actually being in the room. The outsiders, like Cora, could see that Darl was distinctive because he “was different from those others. I always said he was the only one of them that had his mother's nature, had any natural affection” (20). Darl showed emotion and often got caught up in theoretical thought instead of being in

reality.
Darl’s downfall occurred after hit with tragedy and inconvenience continuously. His mother dies, and in order to follow her wishes the family must take her body to a cemetery forty miles away for burial. The Bundrens encounter extreme heat and rising flood waters of the rivers they must cross, all while transporting a rapidly decaying corpse. Eventually, Darl, the most sensitive member of the family, commits an act of despair and sets the barn housing his mother’s corpse on fire. Darl's post-traumatic stress consumes him and he enters a downward spiral into madness, which ends him in a mental institution. His last monologue is repetitive and he loses sight of himself. There is a loss in his initial clear tone and all of the references to “he/him” are of Darl referring to himself in the third person. No longer can he decipher between reality and psychological thoughts; stating, “Darl has gone to Jackson. They put him on the train, laughing, down the long car laughing, the heads turning like the heads of owls when he passed. "What are you laughing at?" I said. “Yes yes yes yes yes."” (244). Darl’s original insightful diction is lost and he no longer connects with his environment; his world becomes an interior one, so his diction turns inward.
After the Bundrens encounter countless complications, each character's true self is exposed.

Under pressure is when people’s flaws are exposed which is exactly what occurs to Darl. Cash on the other hand, due to his more realistic and obsessive behavior becomes the more sane brother and shifts to the head narrator. Near the end of the novel, after Darl is institutionalized, Cash finally begins to question his family and social norms. Cash states, “sometimes I aint so sho who’s got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him and when he does it” (223). Cash realizes that sanity is all based on perspective and in the conservative, religious south, Darls rash actions are condemned. How Darl went about burning his mother’s coffin is looked at an action of someone who is mentally ill, however, Cash claims he had thought about getting rid of her multiple times during the journey and “how it would be God’s blessing if He did take her outen out hands” and that he can “almost believe that he [Darl] done right in a way” (233). The rest of the family thought selfishly- scared of being sued- instead of being true to their familial bond. Since the majority agreed on punishing Darl, he was sent away, proving Cash’s point that it “aint nothing else to do

with him but what the most folks says is right” (233). The end unfolds how sanity is relative and Darl’s insanity in the eyes of others might just be his failure to conform to social norms.
Faulkner illustrates that you can never tell who is actually insane beneath what appears to be a stable composure. In the case of the Bundrens, each character has initial flaws, but the true selves are revealed when put under an immense amount of grief and difficulty. Some characters, like Cash, Dewey Dell, and Anse focus on a specific task instead of outwardly grieving, which comes off as insincere and selfish. However, these characters are able to handle the tragedy better than Darl who is the most sensitive and intellectual of the family. He is torn apart and loses his senses. Cash ends the novel by stating, “This world is not his world; this life his life” (250). There is a thin line between sane and insane, which depending on the perspective Darl crosses. In reality, all opinions are relative and are solely based on each individual's viewpoint.