Compare And Contrast As I Lay Dying And Rashomon

An individual 's perspective can dominate their perception of events. This becomes evident when a story has been recollected by numerous spectators. Gathering the same story from multiple perspectives can be very challenging or very simple. It can cause a true story to fall victim of distortion or it can simply cause the true story to become more clear. This dilemma had been portrayed by numerous individuals including, William Faulkner in his novel, “As I Lay Dying” or the film “Rashomon”, directed by Akira Kurosawa. “As I Lay Dying” and “Rashomon” both contain multiple perspectives, telling their accounts of the same story, however in “Rashomon” the truth only becomes more concealed as the movie goes on, while in “As I Lay Dying”, the truth

The movie is about a trial for the murder of a samurai, five people tell their accounts of the events that took place. However the stories told, contain contrasting perspectives therefore contradicting each other. What had been made certain was a woman, a samurai and a bandit named Tajomaru, did something peculiar. The bandit had sexual desires for the women who was the samurai’s wife, so the bandit ends up leaving the samurai tied up against a tree. This was what the characters in the story all agreed on. The remaining story, had been skewed by contradicting viewpoints on the events that took place. According to Tajmaru the bandit, he killed the samurai as he, “spears the samurai with a mighty heave”(209). This would make sense except the dead samurai who uses his wife as a medium to testify in the trial claims he killed himself. As he picks up a dagger and “brutally thrust it into his chest”(303). The two perspectives between the samurai and the bandit contradict each other 's stories as a commoner remarks, “the more I listen the more mixed up I get”(256). As declared by the commoner the truth behind the way the Samurai had been murdered seemed lost. Furthermore as the different individuals recollected their interpretations of the event that took place, the true was forever left

In the novel, the Bundren family takes refuge in a farmer 's home and barn. It soon becomes apparent that the barn has caught fire, but how? Vardaman sees the villain but is silenced by his sister. However he does single out every Bundren family member as not responsible, except Darl(pg 215). It now seemed reasonable that what Vardaman and his sister, Dewey Dell saw was Darl setting the fire. The next perspective in the novel is by Darl, who never mentions the source of the fire, only claims “The whole lost of the ban takes fire at once”(pg218-219). This added to the suspicion that he had set the fire. However no character had yet fully claimed Darl was responsible for the fire. The truth finally uncovers when Cash adds more detail to who really set fire to the barn, explicitly calling out Darl by name, “Darl set fire to it”(pg 232). Darl was never mentioned by Vardeman, he just implied that Darl may have been responsible. Leading to suspicion, but no sustainable claims calling out Darl, as a non-Bundren family member could have caused the fire. Until the reader reads that Cash clearly points his finger at Darl that the reader knows who set the