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Thomas Driedger Enns

English 3050

16 February 2014

Animal Imagery in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying:

A Phenomenological Analysis of Meaning

William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying is laden with rich descriptions and metaphors of animals, but

interpreting these symbolic images is a daunting task. When mothers become fish, and horses become

mothers, it is challenging to develop a meaningful understanding of what the animal imagery symbolizes.

A helpful way of engaging with Faulkner's convoluted animal imagery in As I Lay Dying is from a

phenomenological perspective, which causes a poetic 'bringing forth' of meaning to emerge. From this

perspective, images of fish and horses cut through Faulkner's textual opacity, providing much needed

emotional clarity to the Bundren family's psyche. Indeed, exploring Faulkner's use of animal imagery

through a phenomenological lens helps to address how the animal imagery can be interpreted, not as a

disconnect between representation and meaning, but as a way of poetically embodying meaning.

A significant element of postmodern literature and philosophy was attempting to understand the

failure of language as a communicative tool, which resulted in a paradigm struggling with

compartmentalized and reductive logic (Heidegger 146). An example of this would be reducing a poem

into the 'important parts' and then breaking those parts down further, which would culminate in the

realization that language cannot possibly explain why the poem is meaningful. Certain literary critics

have asserted that Faulkner's prose is a testament to how language fails, but this analysis is too reductive,

and breaking As I Lay Dying into pieces is not helpful.

By turning to phenomenologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, a more

persuasive analysis can emerge. Rather than being bogged down with reductionism, Heidegger and

Merleau-Ponty explain how language succeeds at communication through creative expression such as

poetry (Merleau-Ponty 6). This type of approach asserts that "we need to 'rediscover' the perceived world
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with the help of ...[poetry and] art" (10). This phenomenological characterization of language was

adopted by contemporary literary scholars Christopher White and Kathryn Olsen, who pointed to the

poetic meaning of the animal metaphors in As I Lay Dying as a rediscovery of the perceived world of the

Bundrens. Through a phenomenological lens, Faulkner's animal imagery and metaphors become a

conscious interaction with the Bundren's psyches.

As I Lay Dying is weighed down with animal imagery. After Addie Bundren dies, the Bundren

children use animals symbolically to characterize their mother's death. Most emphatically, Vardaman

asserts that his "mother is a fish" (Faulkner 67) that he caught and plans to eat. This is a provocative and

uneasy image that helps to articulate Vardaman's emotional instability as he tries to deal with the death of

his mother. Another example of this symbolic usage is that Darl asserts that Jewel's mother is a horse

(95). With this image, many of the familial issues between Darl and Jewel are clearly and vividly

presented. Furthermore, Dewey Dell converses with a cow as if it were a woman, giving a voice to the

loneliness and isolation that Dewey Dell's situation brings to her (58). In each instance, the Bundren

family transfers their emotions through symbolism involving animals. For example, Vardaman's

conception of a tangible fish turning into meat, is his attempt to deal with his mother changing from a

living person into a corpse.

To integrate this symbolic analysis into a phenomenological framework, the use of animal signals

throughout As I Lay Dying points to the various ways that characters attempt to harness language to

explain their existences. Each of the characters does this to differing levels which reflects their

character's emotional capacity, but in each instance the animal images help them to understand their

emotional issue. The animal metaphors help the characters to understand the way that they are feeling,

which could not be achieved without the use of the animal imagery.

Literary phenomenologist Kathryn Olsen contends that Faulkner's "unique prose style is an attempt

to evoke the metaphorical lost landscapes of the past" (Olsen 95). Through a Heideggarian and Merleau-
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Pontian post-structural analysis, Olsen asserts that Faulkner is using the language of poetry to create

meaning which ultimately results in identifying a new dimension of human existence. This post-

structuralist analysis allows for Faulkner's prose to become a narrative "entwining past and present in the

language of poetry" (95).

Faulkner's novels are difficult, and Olsen identifies the act of reading As I Lay Dying as like

"detective work, following subjects and verbs through Faulkner's tortuously long sentences, tracing

pronouns that seem to have no clear referent, wondering at his signature vast lexicon" (Olsen 95). While

this opacity is revealing in certain capacities, it also results in a great deal of difficulty. Olsen helpfully

identifies that many Faulkner scholars use Addie Bundren as an example of how Faulkner is attempting to

explain that language is divorced from that which it attempts to give meaning to, or that language is

separate from what it describes. However, while this is Addie's perspective (and can be seen as a

spokesperson for post-structural philosophy), it is not Faulkner's own viewpoint.

Olsen claims that Faulkner's writing if far from divorced from meaning, but is instead a type of

"language of poetry" that allows meaning to reveal itself. The novel is an invitation "into a contemplation

of textuality and the nature of language, of the supposed tension between words and their meanings"

(Olsen 96). This is done by asserting that Faulkner creates As I Lay Dying not as a representation, but as

a bringing forth that is connected to being. This bringing forth is effectively conveyed through the use of

animal imagery and metaphors.

Christopher White postulates that the Bundren family uses animal metaphors such as "my mother is

a fish" to convey modernist meaning and affects (The Modern Magnetic Animal: "As I Lay Dying" and

the Uncanny Zoology of Modernism). White claims that animals play a crucial role in making it a

modernist text, where characters "exchange attributes with their nonhuman counterparts" (White 82).

Faulkner does this by giving animals human characteristics, as well as giving characters human attributes.

The animal imagery is purposefully used to convey affects and states where language otherwise fails.
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Animals haunt the text of the novel as the Bundren Matriarch Addie is laid to rest, and White

claims that animals act as "a non-human analogue to Addie's cryptic presence" (White 84). This presence

is symbolic of the difficulty that the Bundren's have in laying Addie to rest. White explains that the novel

"consistently opens itself up to the non-linguistic, or perhaps more-than, or not quite, linguistic - a body

language or "animal magnetism" - which informs language itself" (White 84). For example, to clarify the

way that Addie understands animals as a metaphor for the way that language fails, she explains that words

are often inadequate for expressing meaning, but Addie describes this eloquently using animal imagery:

Just the gaps in people's lacks, coming down like the cries of geese out of the wild darkness in the

old terrible nights, fumbling at the deeds like orphans to whom are pointed out in a crowd two faces

and told, That is your father, your mother. (Faulkner 174)

In this quotation, Addie explicitly explains how language fails using the cry of geese to illustrate the way

language falls short of what it tries to do. The fact that she uses the geese (which were explained earlier

in the novel as a past experience of Addie's) as a "transmutation of them into metaphor, a powerful

vehicle for conveying the bitterness, hatred, and loss that drive her contempt of language" (White 85) is a

poetic embodiment of meaning that conjures up an understanding that would not exist without the use of

the image of geese flying in darkness, and it creates a mental picture utterly strange but comprehensible

nonetheless.

Faulkner uses animals as a metaphorical presence in a very intentional way. According to White,

the use of animal metaphors allows entities that cannot participate in language to remain in the story as a

"foreign presence" (86). As a result, the foreign presence interjected through animalistic references points

directly toward how language inevitably fails to seize hold of that which it desires to capture, but

succeeds when it can refer poetically to the foreign presence of animals.

In a modernist novel, animals are used as a counterpoint to the metaphysical nature of speech.

During an era where representation was being characterized in light of modern technology such as film,
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Faulkner's intense interest in describing animals as 'moving beings' is significant. White points out that

the most vivid example of this is the interaction that Vardaman has with Jewel's horse. In this encounter,

Vardaman attempts to share his emotions with the horse, explaining how the:

Life in him runs under the skin, under my hand, running through the splotches, smelling up into

my nose where the sickness is beginning to cry, vomiting the crying, and then I can breathe,

vomiting it. It makes lots of noise. I can smell the life running up from under my hands, up my

arms, and then I can leave the stall. (Faulkner 54)

In this instance, the horse helps Vardaman to cope with his emotions. However, in another interaction

with the horse, Vardaman has an encounter that fails. Instead of feeling recharged, Vardaman's attempt at

describing the horse results in him breaking the horse down into a series of components, which is a

complete interactive failure.

The rationale behind Faulkner portraying his characters as failing to express their intentions with

language is a question not related to the novel's specific content, but is related to the novel's own form.

Faulkner relies on animals to represent characters' thoughts and the way that the Bundren family is

connected, regardless of whether or not the character's own understanding is affected by the interaction

with an animal.

In As I Lay Dying William Faulkner created a heart wrenchingly disconcerting portrait of the

Bundrens, and their struggle is a sordid and utterly confusing journey through cryptic prose. With as

much literary analysis as has been done with As I Lay Dying, it is noteworthy to remember that Faulkner

was not a phenomenologist, but he was fascinated with the ways in which language conveys meaning.

Therefore, to assume a phenomenological perspective allows the animal imagery and metaphors to

characterize the ways in which Faulkner connected his characters to meaning, through a poetic and utterly

cryptic exploration of the way that meaning is a bringing forth, and not a separation
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Works Cited

Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. New York: Vintage International, 1990. Print.

Heidegger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art." Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. Toronto: Harper

Perennial, 1935. 143-212. Print.

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Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The World of Perception. New York: Routledge, 1947. Print.

Olsen, Kathryn. "Raveling Out Like a Looping String: As I Lay Dying and Regenerative Language."

Journal of Modern Literature (2010): 95-111. JSTOR.

White, Christopher T. "The Modern Magnetic Animal: "As I Lay Dying" and the Uncanny Zoology of

Modernism." Journal of Modern Literature (2008): 81-101. JSTOR.