A Bakhtinian reading of William Faulkner’s “As I lay dying”

R e1·ista de Estudios Norteamerirnnos. 11. • ó 11998). pp. 51 - 67 A BAKHTINIAN READING OF WILLIAM FAULKNER 'S AS 1 LAY DYING MARÍA R urn NORIEGA SÁNCHEZ Un iversidad de Valenci a/Univers it y of Sheffield* «The aim of ali life is death» Sigmund Freud. «Bcyond th e Pleasure Principie», 1920. «Death is t he sa nction of everything th at the sto ryte ll er can tell» Walter Bcjamin, «The Storyteller», 1936 In a 1956 interview, William Faulkner described his nove l As I Loy Dying ( 1930) as a « lOUr de fo rce» whi ch he wr ote in six weeks: «I si mply imagined a gr oup of people a mi subjected t hem to the simple universal ca tastrophcs w hich are flood and fire with a sim ple natural motive to gi ve direc ti on to th eir progress.» 1 The story linc is ce rtainly simple, but not so the mode of its telling. When Addie Brundcn dies, her family takes her body 10 be buried in Jefferson, following her wish. How eve r. the narrative technique is highly com plex: a mu ltiplicity of voices, fifl ee n in t ota l. express lh eir reactions to dealh and the journcy in fifty nine fragmented monologu es, building an int rica te image of Add ie. he r family and the c ommunit y. Thc result is an auth en tic polyphony in Mikhail Ba khtin 's sen se. Bakhtin's formulations on the theory of the novel seem particularly rcleva nt to the narra ti ve of As / Lay Dying. F au lkn er's novel co nslitues an elusi ve lcxt which has provoked the most divcrging int erp retations among critics. lt is the aim of the present essay to apply " I am gra teful lo Prof. Javier Coy for his valuable eo mments and to the Fundación Balagucr Gonel Hermanos for providing financia! a.~sis t ance during thc writing ofthis paper. l. lnterview w it h Jean Stein Vanden Heuvel (Ncw York, 1956) in Lion in the Carden. lllterl'iews with Wi lliam Fau/kner 1926-1962, ed. by James B. Mcr iweth er & Michael Millgate (Lincoln & London: Univcrsity of Nebraska Press. 1968). p. 244. 52 María Rwh No riega Sá11 c he z Bakhtin 's fu ndamental concepts of po lyphony and het eroglossia , the stylistic self - consciousn ess of a language and th e chronotrope, to the analysis of this novel in orde r to throw new li ght onto its most problematic aspects. Mikha il Bakh ti n ( 1885-1975) is gradually emer ging as a key figure in twenliethce ntury thought. His co mplicated, obsc ur e. and some how unsystematic work an d, especia ll y, the di fficulties he experienced in publishing it in the darkest years of r ece nt Russian history, have considerably delay ed the diffusion ofhis ideas in the anglophone world. However, Bakhtin 's co ntribution to our u nde rstanding of language and the t heory of the novel is substantial and, as I contend here , cxtrem ely pertinent to Willi am Faul kner's na rr at ive. Firs tl y, 1 will outline a brief introduc ti on to Bakhtin 's major concepts and later undertakc the analysis of As l Lay Dying.2 A cen tral no ti on for Bakhtin is that of «di alogue», understood as a special sort of interaction. Bakhtin env i saged ali of li fe as an ongoing dialogue which takes place al every mome nt uf da il y existence. Life by its very nature is dialogic. An d so is discuurse: No living word relates to its object in a singular way: between the word and its object. between th e word and the speak ing su bjec t. therc ex ists an el astic environment of other, alíen words aboul the sa me obj ec t, the sa me theme ... The word, dircctcd towards its object, enters a dialogi ca lly ag itated and tension-filled en vironm ent of alien words, value ju dgements and accc nt s, ... and a li of this may crucia ll y shape discourse.3 Language is thus internally dialogized. In any language or cultu re , there is a conflict between cenu·ipctal and centrifuga! forces. Centrípeta! fo rces aim at central ising and unifying mcaning. ln discourse, th ey are put to use by any d om inan! social group to impose its own monologic, unitary perceptions oft rut h. However, always working against th at central ising process, there are centrifu ga ! forces which stratify and fragmcnt id eo l og i ca l thought into multiple views of th e world. According to Bakhtin, language is nevera uni ta ry system of norms. At any given m om ent of its evolution, language is stratified into socio-idcological languages. L it erary language itself is only one oft hese heteroglot languages - and in its turn is also strati fi ed into languages: La n guage is he teroglot from top to bo ttom: it r ep resents the co -exist ence of socio-ideological contradictions bctween the present and the past, bctween 2. 1 wi ll ma inly refer to Bakh ti n's essays in The Dial og ic Tmaginatio 11 , ed. by Michael Ho lq ui st & trans. by Caryl Emerson & M. H olq uist (Austi n: University Texas Press, 1981 ). For a critica] discussion of Bakhtin 's work, see Gary Saul Morson & Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhri11 . Cr ear irm of a Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). 3. M.M. Bakhtin, «Discourse in the Novel» ( 1 934 -35). Tlze Di alogic /magina tio 11 , p. 276. A Bakflti11i w1 Readi11M of Wi/liam Fau/kner's As I Lay Dyin g 53 differing cpochs ofthc past, between diff erent soc io -id eo logical gro ups in the present, bctween tendencies, schools. circles and so forth, ali given a bodily form . .i Whereas poetic genrcs cxcrcise a centripetal, and therefore homogenising and hiera r ch i cisin g, influ ence, the novel wa s historica lly s hap ed by the c urr en t of decentralising, centrifu ga ! forces. Polyphony and h eleroglossia enter the novel and organizc th emsclves within it into a slructur cd artistic syst em. Bakhtin discusses severa! forms forincorporating and organizing heteroglossia in the no ve l, mainly hybridisation, character zones and incorporated genres. For Bakhtin, Dostoevsky was thc creator of thc polyphonic novel: «A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and conscious nesscs , a genuinc polyphony of fully valid voices is in fact the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky 's novcls ... a plurality of co nsciousncsses, with e qua l rights and each with its own wo rl d.»5 The essence of polyph ony lies prccisely in the fact that the voices remain indep cnd ent and, as such, are combined in a unity of a higher order than homophony, as we can apprcciatc in As J La\' Dying. Thc real action of novels is a complcx play of valucs and tones, as discourscs and their speakers oricnt lhemselves to each othcr. The most importan! place where this complexity is dcvelopcd is in the voi ce of the author. Authorial telling ennacts the hybridisa ti ons of disco ur se. The dialogues that co nstitute no ve ln ess are to be found not pr imarily in the co mposilionally cxpressed dialogues among the charactcrs, but in the hybridised, double-voiced. dialogized hcteroglossia of the aulhor's own voice: A dialogue is played out between the author and its characters -not a dramatic dialogue broken up into statement - and -response, but that type of novclistic dialogue that realizes itself within the boundaries of constructions that ex ternally resemble monologues.6 In As! lay Dying, multiple dialogical relationships are established, between thc author and cach charactcr, between each charactcr and its own co nsciousness, belween characters th emselves. and between characters and readcrs. What on a first consideration appcar to be monologues, co ntain within thcm <lialogic tension s. The authorial fi gure has becn remov ed from control. The author 's voice is al so dialogized, as shown in the charactcrs' discourse. Many critics have condemned the lack of ve ri similitud that they appreciate in ccrtain, characters' speeches, such as Yardaman's in the bar, where the 4. Bakhtin, «Di sc:o ursc in the Novel». p. 291. 5. Mikhail Bakhtin. Pmblem s of Dostoe vsJ..)·'.1· Poetics. e d. & trans. by Caryl Emerson (Mmncapolis & Lo n<l on: Univ. Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 6. 6. Bakhtin. «Discourse in the Novel». p. 320. María Ruth Noriega Scínchez speaker has been a ll owed a command of l anguage that gocs beyond his educational background and possibilities of articulation: Jt is dark . 1 can hear wood, sil cncc: 1 know thcm. But not living sounds, not cvcn him. It is as th ough thc dar k were resolving him out of this i ntegrity , into an unrelatcd scattering of components -snuffings and stampings: smells of cooling fl esh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of a co-ordinatcd whole of splotched hidc and strong bo ne s within w hi ch , detached and secret and familiar, anis diffe rent rrom my is. 1 sce him dissolvc -legs. a rolling cyc. a gaudy splotching li ke cold flamesand float upon the dark in fading solution; ali one yet neithcr; ali n either yc t nonc (51 )· 7 Vardaman 's thoughts are obvious ly not app r opr iate to the rnind of an uned uca ted ch ild. Thcrc is a gap between the rethoric and the author. Eric Sundquist secs in this gap a challenge to a narra ti vc consciousness formcd by a supposed un ion bctween the author and bis l anguagc, which is made conven tional by the standard dc vice of omniscient narration. which the novel ex plicity di scar ds .8 In these lines. we hear Vardaman 's vo ice , but on ly as it is interwoven and per m ca ted by the author's acc ents. We have thercfore an examplc of Bakhtinian double-voiced di scourse : the au thor takes someone else's dircct discourse and infuses il with his authorial intentions and consciousncss while still retaining the original spcaker's intention; in thc onc ut tera n ce, tw o consciousness coexist. Th is h yb r idisa tion elucidat es Faulkne1"s techniquc not as a fault or mere convention but as a powerful device to cxpre ss narrati vc consciousness. Morcover , Faulkne r is not pursuing mimctism . Dorothy Hale points out that. for Bakh tin as for Faulkner, realism lies not in the illusion of unmediated representation but in the picturing of social voices within language: Bakhtin 's work «participares in and hclps clarify the social formalism that Faulkner cmploys.»9 Ch ara ct ers enter into dial ogue with other characters in what Bakh ti n designa tc s as « charac ter zones »: «a zone of his own , his own sp hcr c of in!luence on the authorial context surro und ing him, a sphcre that exte n ds beyond the boundarics of the direct discourse allott ed to him. The area occupied by an importan! character's voice must in any cvent be broader th an his direct a nd "ac tual» words". to Faulkncr succcc ds in creating 7. William Faulkner. As I úry Dyin¡? (London: Vintage, 1996). Ali further rcfercnccs are to th is edition and pagc numhcrs will be cited parenthetically in the tcxt. 8. Eric. J. Sundquist, « Dcath . Grief. Analogous Fonn: As I Lay Dying», in Plrilos ophirnl Appmadrn to Litemture. Nell' Es say.1· on Nineteemlrmu/ fo•e11tieth· cenwry Te .\'f .1· . cd. by Wílliam E. Cain (Lewishurg: Bucknell Univ Pre ss . 1984). pp. 165-182 (p. 166). 9. Dorothy J. Hale, « As I l-''Y Dying '.1· Hctcrogeneous Discoursc». Nen-el. 23 ( J) (Fall 1989), 5-23 (p. 21 ). 10. Bakhtin, «Discoursc in th ~ Novel», p. 320. A Ba khti11ia 11R ead i11g1 !f Willia111 Fa11/kller's As/ /..a y Dy i11 ;¡ 55 profoundly idiosyncra tü : zo n cs surrounding characters. Charactcr zoncs are well adaptcd to portraying the dynamics of psy cho logical li fe, since th ey mak e it possihle to show from within how a charac ter thinks and feels. The comp lcx pattcrn of alternation of narratives be tw een insiders and outsiders conforms to a desig:n whi ch pres en ts the diffcrem:es bet wee n cx pcrien ce d. shared, or ohscrvcd suffcring. Possi ble mod cs of reaction to d ea th and gricf are thus cstablished. Each of the Bundr cns co m es to terms with Addie's disa ppearance in thcir own p ar ticular way. The outside narrators such as Tul!. Cora. or Peabody introduce a range of social responses to thc Bundrens's hchaviour. from solidarity of di sapproval and rejection. much in thc fashion nf a Greek chorus. The need to coopcrate during the journey disguises the isolation of cach nf the Bundrcns. D uc to their co mmon task. taking Addie's coffi n to Jefferson, the diffu scd fa mily comes t ogc ther. But such co h es ion is only momcntar y, and soon disintegration takes over. Th e la t:k of co m mu nica ti on under sco rcs the divisions within the famil y. Each o f' the Bundren ch il dr cn trav els alonc, each locked in hi s/ h er own co nsciousness and unablc to com municatc with t he others. Through thcir different points of view, wc gel portraits of each character. their connections and thcir search for idcntity. At the outset of the n ove l, Cash appcars as quite simplc-rnindcd, a man of hardly any words. Practica! and efficient. he uses his car pe nter's skills to huild a co ffin for his mother. The careful and detailed proccss of constructing the box absorbs hirn completely and r cp resents a way of exp r cssing his !ove to his mother, n ot with wo rds but with an act. Throughout thc jou rne y. howc ve r. he scems to hecome more articulare. He is the only one who understands Dar l 's attcmpts to destroy the coffin and who f cc ls sympathy for him. At t hc cnd of thc hook, Cash is able to recognise the co mp lex morality of human bein gs and cxpress sensible judg ements with words: Bul 1 ain 't so sho that are a man ha s thc ri g ht to say wha t is crazy and what ain't. lt 's like there was a fell ow in every man th at's done a-pasl the sanitary or the insani ty. that watchcs t he sa ne and thc insane doings of that man with thc same horror and thc same astonishmen t. (226) Dar! is the rn ost complex and amb iguous character. He is regarded by oth er characters in co ntradi cto ry ways. eithcr asan insanc oras an extremely sensible person. Da r! is by far thc most ar ti culatc. ab le to describe pure pcrception in a highly poctical style. He is granted ninet ee n scctions and functions as thc guide. the main focaliz cr of t he acti on and. in that sc n se, he is very close to the traditi ona l third-pcrson omniscient narrator. His powcrs of cla ir voyance turn him into a witne ss of his famil y's doings. In hi s discussion of thc question of the third pcrson. Ba khtin alludcs to the problcm of understanding the wor ld of the interna! man. that is. of individual cxpcricnce. The posit io n of the author d esc ribi ng th e c haract e1 "s subjective exper ien ce b eco m cs probl ema ti c. Traditional figures suc h as the clown, the fool and thc rogue. who can spy 56 María Ruth Noríega Stí11chez and ea vesdrop. provided a way of exploring the naturc of p eople's inner life. 11 Dar! would lit into this category, particularly that ofthe fool, with its sane/insane eonnotation s. Faulkner invests him with prescient powers. He knows thc secre ts of his family: that Dewcy Dcll is prcgnant or that Anse is not Jcwer s father. Furthermore , he describes in dcta il t wo of thc most imp o11 ant sccnes in the novel. Addie's death momcnt and the finishing of her coftin. without bcing physically present. kw el is a man of action and, consequcntl y. he is only grnntc d one monologue. in which he displays his strong connection with his mo th er and his claim for exclusive posscssion. Throughout thc novel, he is rcpeatedly dcscribed, particularly by Darl, wit h adjectives relatcd to wood: «wooden face» (2), «Jewel's eyes loo k like pale wood» ( 14 ), perhaps to sig nif y h is difficulties in articulating emotions. Dewey De ll 's discour se is dominated by her worry about her unwant cd pregnancy and her efforts to t erm in atc it. which oversh a<lo ws her gricf for her mother's death. In her se nse of aloneness and her meditations on thc invidual's place in thc world. shc scems to follow her mother's cxperiencc. Vardaman, the young ch ild. rcnders in his discour se his ten-ible alte mp ts to understand death. In his childish innocence, he is v er y cl ose to Darl 's derangement. Anse, thc father, is self-centred, egoistical, static. His discour sc stands for the emptiness of words, what Addie most despiscd. Addie is thc centre of thc novel, the source of tension. Her c hi ldren are defin ed in tem1s of her love for th em and in the way th ey fit he r th COI) ' about wo rds and acts. E ven in death, she dominates the actions and thoughts ofher kin, and the whole joumey is permeated with her pr cscm.:c. As will be discussed later, her on ly namllion, locate<l chronologically a ft er her dcath. constitutes a statement on the mcani ng of language and life. For mal dialogism in characters· discourse has a thematic correspondcn ce in the tense relationships cstablished amongst the Bundrcn childrcn, especia l ly between Darl and Jew cl. C ha racter zo nes interact. As we move towards the cnd of the novel, Vardaman ·s discourse becomcs more and mor e similar to Darl 's. The charactcr's speech is also internally dialogised. When cha racters talk to each other in the novel, dialogues are represcnted through use of dialect, but in their interna! thoughts a more complex and poeti ca l language is emp loyed. The use of italics is highly relevant. Tull 's second n arra ti on fil tcrs other voi ces hy means of italics, resulting in a mixture of actual dialogue, personal thoughts. and past and present: On th e third day they got back and they l oa ded h er into the wagon and startcd an<l it already too late. You'll have to go ali the way round by Samson's bridge. It'll takc you a day to get there. Then you 'll be forty miles from Jefferson. Take my team, Anse. We '11 wait for ourn. She 'll want it so. (84-85) 11 . Bakhtin. «Forms of Tim1;: and th c Chronotope in the Novel» (1937-38), The Dialo¡¡íc lmagi11atirm, pp. 158-166. A B11 khti 11ia11 Reading of William Faulkller'.s A.1 · l lAIY Dying 57 Dialogised discourse is carried to it s extremes in Darl' s last section. His personality has completcly split up and. in a schizophrenic way, he refers to himse lf in the third person, maintaining a d ial ogue: «Darl had a little spy-glass he got from Frunce at the war . In it had a woman and a pig with two backs and no fa ce. I know what that i s. "Is that why you are Jau ghing, Darl?".» (241) Bakhtin desc1 ibcs another bas ic form for incorporating heteroglossia in th e novel «in co rpornted genres.» 12 Thc novel perm it s thc in co rpora tion of various gen res, both artistic and extra-artistic, which stratify the linguistic unit of the novel and fu11 her intensi fy its spcech diversity in frcsh ways. In As 1 úi y Dyin g. we hear the dial ec t of poor w hi te farmers, metaphoric and philosophical Jigre ssions, a numbered list of reasons to build a coffin on the bevel, talks by town shopkeepers, cte. It juxtaposes l it ernry ge nres. stylistic registers and tones of voice in such a way that defies any generic classi fication. As 1 La y Dyi11 g pre se nt s affin iti es with the ep ic ge nr e: the Bundren s face terrible or d ea ls du ri ng ajou ney of almos! Homeric dimcnsion s. Jewcl in partic ular evokes the heroes o fle gends who had to over co me a li sor ts of obstacles. But Fa ulkn er's novel also presents dramatic characteristics that pa rt akc of both tragedy and co medy. Th e story of the Bundrens comprises death. violence, hatred and madness, esse ntial elements of tragedies. At the sa rn e time, there is a vcin ofhumour (quite a black humour) that makes tragic situations appear as comi c (for instance, Cash 's broken l eg being fixed with cement). This mixture of the grotesquc wi th the pa th etic renders it dift:icult to label the novel within a single catcgor y. As 1 Lay D y in ~ is thus a hig hl y heteroglossic text. It also draws attcntion to a concept central to Ba khtin 's theor y, th e question of re pr ese nti ng th e image of a language. Wc ha ve s een th at characters are defined in relation to their posi ti on to language. This is especially noticeable in Addie's monologue. w hi ch focuses on h er aversion for words as oppos ed to acts. Her narration repres ent s thc struggle between private and public language ande hallen ges th e representational power of social language. Addie 's probl em with lan guag e representing expcrien ce was also en co unte red by Bakhtin. For Bakhtin. languages are ways of conce ptualis in g the world in w ord s. A langua ge is a compl ex o fb cliefs. Each language of h eterog lossia has ar i se n from a vast arra y of social and psychological experience. La nguages interact wi th other languages and oth er bcl ief co mplexes. To r ea lise and devclop the potenti al of a Janguage, the «out si deness» of another language is required. A language that has entered into dialog ue with a no ther language becomes self-consciou s. The language begins not just to sp ea k, hut to h ear h ow it sounds; it not only re pr esents the wor ld, but im agines itself as thc object of reprcsentation. Wor ds turn in to do uble-voiced words: Th e novel is the expr essi on of a Galil ea n perception of language, one th at de ni es the absolutism of a single and unitary language- ... that has heen made co nsci ous 12 . See Bakhtin, «Discourse in the Novel», pp. 32 0323. 58 María Ruth Noriega Scín chez of the vast pkn itude of national and. more to the point, so cial languagcs-ali o f which are cqually ca pable of being «lang uagcs of truth» . .. What is involved here is a very i mporta nt, in fact a radical revolution in t he d es tinies of huma n disco urse: the funda me ntal lib erat iun of cult ur alse manti c and emotional intentions from the hegemony of a single and unitary language, and consequcnt ly t he simultancous loss of a fceling for languagc as my th. that is, as an absolute form of thought.13 The language becomes simply one of many possible languages, no Jonger indisputable in it s own domain. Different Janguages undcrstand thc world differently. The novel cannot w or k with that kind of absolutc authoritative language that docs not condcsccnd to dialogue. Similarl y, Addie rebels against monological forces which seck to impose fixed mcanings. Such forces are mainly represented by Cora, Whitficld and Anse. ll is signi licant that Addic 's narration is preced ed by Cora 's, which is ful! of profound-sounding re ligious pronounccmcnts and heavy moral clichés -«high dc ad words» ( 1 64 )- and followed by Whitfiel d's . which exemplitics the hypoc1itical use of words. On his way to the Bundrcn s, Whitfield rcsolves to admit his affair wiht Addie for frar th at shc may confcss. Whcn he rcalises that she has not betraycd him. he takes refugc in his words and does not act: « He will accept the wi ll for the deed. Wh o knew th at when 1 framc<l thc words of my confession it was to Ansc 1 spokc them, even though he was not there.» (168) The emptincss of Janguage, the gap between significr an<l signified is emho<licd in Whitficld's sennon at Addie's funera l. as rcflcctcd by Tull: «His voicc is bigger than h im . lt's like they are not the same. I t's Jikc he is one. and his voice is one. swimming on lwo horses side by sidc across the ford and co ming into the ho use. the mu <l -s plashcd one and t he one that never cven got wet , triumphant and sad.» (83) Surrounded by these monological discourses, Addie canno t cstablish a dialogue. Enclosed in her aloneness. she f ee ls that l anguage prevcnts any real comm unication and thercfore distrusts wor ds: «Words are not go o<l ... words don ·1 ever fil even what thcy are trying to say at.» ( 160) 14 For Addie, therc is an inescapablc un balance between experien ce and its a11iculation, since words are inv ented by peoplc who do not experience f cc lings. such as Ansc: «He hada word. too. Love, he ca ll ed i t. But 1 had bccn uscd to words for a long time. I knew that word was like the o ther s: justa shapc to fil ] a lack.» ( 160) Peoplc who feel dceply do not nced words. Within cac h person, there is an individuality that is incomrnunicablc. In her search for se lf -dcfinition ,Add ie dcspcrately yea rns for sorne kind of com muni ca tion, in order lo est ab li sh cnnnections and dialogical relationships. but finds only emptiness: 13. Bakhtin. « Di scourse in thc Novel». pp. 366 - 7. 14. ll is wor th lo note that Faulkncr hi mself h ad a decp concern about words ;rnd thcir cxprcssivc powcr. which is particularly noticcable in his early nove Is such as Soldier.1·· Pin- ( 1926) or Mmquitoe.1· (1927). A B 11k/11 i11ia11 Reading of Wi/liam Fa11/k11er's As I ú1y D yi 11 g 59 Ansc. Why Ansc. Why are you Ansc. I wou ld think about his name until after a whilc I C<JUld see the word as a shapc, a vessel. and I would watch him Iiqucfy and flo w into it like col d mol asses flowing out of th e darkn ess into the ve ssc l, until the jar stood ful! and motionless: a significant shape profound ly wi thout lifc like an empty door frame : and t he n I would find that 1 had forgotten th c namc of the jar . ( 161 ) The i nc reasi ng alienation from her hu sba nd l eads h er to consider him as dead. As a rcvenge. Addie uses words as weapons: she a sks Ans e to promise to takc her ba ck to be buried in Jefferson. lronically, w ord s force Anse, the most static character in the story, to undertake actio n and set the family in rnotion. In face of th e di sas t ro us j oumey , neighbours try to diss uade h im . ButAnse int ends to k eep loya l to his promise, to his words. At the end of thc novel. though. wc find out that he hadan ulterior motive for finishing the joume y, more in li ne with his se lfishness: getting ncw t eeth anda n ew w if c. Addic reac h cs the co nclusion that any ex p erience ( motherhood. ! ove. fear) can be ci t hcr an intense ly fclt reality or a c:onventi ona l form of speec h and behaviour. Cons eque ntly, ac:ts are pr eferable to words and she retreats into silence: «I would lie by him in the da rk . hearing the dark land talking of God 's lo vc and hi s beauty and His sin: hearing the dark v oic elcssness in which the w ords are the deeds . and thc other words that are not d eeds. t ha t are just the gaps in peo p les' lacks' ( 16 2-3). Fur t hermo r c. she dec id es to ac:t. and her ad ulterous rela tionsh ip with Withfie ld imp lies a cha llen gc to words and mono l ogical forces. She dc l ib e ra t ely ch oos es a priest, the instrument of God who cr eate d sin: «] wou ld think ofthe s in as gar ment s which we wou ld r emove in order to s hap e and coerce thc te rr ib le bl oo d to the forlorn echo of the de<1d wor d h ig h in thc air ¡, .. ] b eca use pc op le to wh om sin is just a rnattcr forlo rn ec ho of the dc ad wo rd h igh in the air [ . .. ] b eca use peo ple to whom sin is j usta rnatter of words, to them salvati on is just wonls t oo· ( 163/ 1 65 ). Two co n ceptions of sin are thcn presented: as a word. leading to social damnati on; and as an act , le ading Lo sa lvation. Ac tually, Addie expects to be « save d» by the act s of her s on Je we l. the fruit of sin. C harle s Palli se r se es in Addic's infidclity a defiant action to thwa11 Pro vi denc e. a way of asserting her free wi ll as oppos ed to pred ete nn ination. 15 An obsessive awareness of monol ogic forces of prcd es tination pervad es t he novel. C ora always sces «thc hand of God » in the setbacks that the B undrens suffer. Whil e Anse pa ssively acc ep ts des tin y. Addie ragcs aga inst itas a kind of liv in g deat h and claims her ri ght to fr ee will. The selfco n scio usness of l ang uage claim ed by Bak htin is patent in the typography and thc ima g ery us ed by Faul k ne r in As J Lay Dyi11 g. On the surfa ce of the novel. ext e rna ! signs ca ll atte nt ion to thc i mage of la ngu age: frcquent ch anges into and from 15. Charles Palli se r. «Prcdestination and Freedom in Av f ú1y Dyi11R », American Literatu re . 58 (4) (D ec 1986). pp .. 557573(561 ). 66 María Rwlz Noriega Scí11chez BIBLIOGRAPHY Secondary sources BAKHTIN. MIKHAIL M .. !11e Dialogic lmagi11atio11. ed. by Michael Holquist & trans. by Caryl Emerson & Micha<!! Holquist. Austin: University T exas Press. 1981. BAKHTIN. MIKHAIL M .. Problems of Do .1·toe1·sky ·s Poetics. cd. & trans. by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis & London: Univcrsity of Minn esota Press , 1984. BEDIENT. CALVIN. «Pridc and Nakcdness: As I Lay Dyi11g », Modem L a11guage Q11artcly. 29 (1968). 61 -76. BLE IK ASTEN. ANDRÉ. The !11k ofMelm1clwly. Faulkner's Novelsjim11 Thc Sound and thc Fur y to Light in Aug ust. Blo omigto n & lnd i anapo lis: In dia na Univer si ty Pres~. 1990. BLOTNER. JOSEPH. Fa11lk11e1: A Biography. London: Chatto & Windus. 19 74. BR O OKS. CLEANT H. Willimn Fa11lk11e1: The Yok11apata11pha Co1t11t1)'. New Haven & London: Yalc U niversity Prcss. 1963. BROOKS. 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