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Senior Project Presentation. As I Lay Dying and Cubism Themes and Motifs by Mr. gasaway.
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Senior Project Presentation • As I Lay Dying and Cubism • Themes and Motifs • by Mr. gasaway
“No man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such thing really as was because the past is. It is a part of every man, every woman, and every moment. All of his and her ancestry, background, is all a part of himself and herself at any moment.” Thesis
William Faulkner (1897-1962) • Greatest American Southern writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950 • A master of modernist experimentation in the novel, related to his obsession with time • stream of consciousness and multiple voices
William Faulkner (1897-1962) • Born William Falkner, 25 Sept. 1897, New Albany, Mississippi • 1918: joins Canadian Royal Air Force • 1919-20 U of Mississippi • 1921: U of Mississippi Post Office
Faulkner: Major Phase • 1929: The Sound and the Fury • [4 narrators] • 1930 As I Lay Dying • [15 narrators]
William Faulkner (1897-1962) • His great theme is the influence of the past on the present… • Gavin Stevens in Requiem for a Nun (1951), says: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
As I Lay Dying By William Faulkner 1930
Faulkner’s Mississippi 2,400 square miles; the population, 6,298 whites and 9,313 Negroes, for a total of 15,611
What is the American South? • “You're in the American South now, a proud region with a distinctive history and culture. A place that echoes with names like Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee, Scarlett O'Hara and Uncle Remus, Martin Luther King and William Faulkner, Billy Graham, Mahalia Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley. Home of the country blues and country music, bluegrass and Dixieland jazz, gospel music and rock and roll. Where menus offer both down-home biscuits and gravy and uptown shrimp and grits. Where churches preach against "cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women" (all Southern products) and where American football is a religion.” - From John Shelton Reed's My Tears Spoiled My Aim
Modern Similarities • As I Lay Dying is like the TV show Desperate Housewives: told in voice-over by a woman who is already dead. Faulkner’s characters share inner thoughts through voiceovers.
Modern Similarities • As I Lay Dying is like the movie Pulp Fiction: told from multiple viewpoints and in a non-linear plot. Example: Vincent Vega gets shot and killed, but then he’s in the last scene (which begins the movie).
Major Motifs Earth: Addie’s destination Water: (flood) river crossing Fire: barn-burning Air: the smell of Addie’s rotting corpse
Major Themes a. History and race b. Deterioration (of the family, the South, words) c. Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man and environment d. Horror, violence and the abnormal Features of his works a. complex plot b. stream of consciousness c. characterization: the psychology of characters d. violation of chronology e. courtroom rhetoric: formal language f. multiple point of view, circular form continue exit
The Mind vs. The Body Critic Edmond Volpe says of Faulkner’s work: “Faulkner dramatizes the recognition that the human body must exist in chronological time, the mind does not function within the boundaries placed on the human body. The mind fuses past, present, and future. Because we think beyond clock measured time and because what we do today is shaped by what happened yesterday, ‘Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are IS: Indivisible. One.’”
Innner Narrators Anse Bundren: patriarch of the Bundren family Addie: Anse’s dying (then dead) wife Cash: (30) the eldest son, the best carpenter in the area Darl: (28) the second son, sensitive, cruel and intuitive Jewel: (18) the third son, favoring actions over words Dewey Dell (17): the only Bundren daughter Vardaman: (9): the youngest Bundren exit
OuterNarrators Whitfield: the local preacher Vernon Tull: Bundren’s neighbor Cora Tull: Vernon’s wife, nosy and pious Lucius Peabody: the local doctor Samson: another neighbor who puts the Bundrens up for a night on their journey Henry Armstid: another neighbor who hosts the Bundrens one unfortunate night Moseley: druggist in Mottson, a town the Bundrens pass through MacGowan: a drugstore clerk in Jefferson exit
Faulkner’s Process • 59 interior monologues where life and death are revealed through the characters • Our memory, the way we understand, is related to our physical perception. • Monologues are very sensual perceptions of the real world • These intensify the character’s mental & emotional experiences for the reader
More Faulkner’s Process • Interior monologues • Stream of consciousness • First person narrator makes action immediate • No omniscient narrator--so no center • 59 chapters apportioned among 15 characters • 7 are concerned • 8 are detached
cubism • After 1909, Picasso and Braque began a more systematic study of structure which we know as "Analytical Cubism". In this period, they removed bright colors from their compositions, favoring monochromatic earth tones so that they could focus primarily on the structure. The paintings of this period look as if they have deconstructed objects and rearranged them on the canvas. One goal of this is to depict different viewpoints simultaneously. • Traditionally, an object is always viewed from one specific viewpoint and at one specific (stopped) moment in time. Picasso and Braque felt that this was too limiting, and desired to represent an object as if they are viewing it from several angles or at different moments in time. Innovative as this was, the danger was that many of the works of this period are completely incomprehensible to the viewer, as they start to lose all sense of form.~Eyeconart.com
The Mirror Effect • Most people look in a mirror this way: Full-front, Head-on
We rarely… Look at the sides…. . ….and never behind
Your Artistic Assessment Project • While reading the story, take several notes in your journals on the characters and the perceptions you have of these character’s, as well as the perceptions they present of themselves. • You will need to draw a portrait of one of the characters using the ideas of cubism. The features should be constructed so that we, the viewer, perceive the character as you see the character • Represent the character “as if [you] are viewing him or her from several angles that are presented in the book • (Therefore, it may help to select a character beforehand to take detailed notes on throughout the piece)
