Faulkner - As I Lay Dying

Stream of consciousness is a phrase used by psychologists. It was created in the 19th century by psychologist William James, the founder of American pragmatist philosophy, and refers to the continuous flow of human consciousness. James believes that human thinking activity is not composed of separate and isolated parts, but a continuous "stream" containing various complex feelings and thoughts. In his article "On Several Issues Ignored in Introspective Psychology" published in 1884, he believed that human thinking activities are an inseparable and endless "flowing water". He said: "Consciousness is not a connection of fragments, but is constantly flowing. It is most natural to use the metaphor of a 'river' or a 'flowing water' to express it. From now on, when we talk about it again, Call it the stream of thought, the stream of consciousness, or the flow of subjective life."

The concept of "stream of consciousness" proposed by James emphasizes the uninterrupted nature of thinking, that is, there is no "blank" and it is always "flowing." "; It also emphasizes its super-temporal and super-spatial nature, that is, it is not bound by time and space, because consciousness is a purely subjective thing that is not restricted by objective reality, and it can make the present and the past inseparable. This concept and its connotative ideas directly influenced writers and were borrowed and borrowed by them, thus entering the field of literature and affecting the creation of writers, thus leading to the emergence of "stream of consciousness" literature. In fact, James's psychological theory is not the only cause of stream-of-consciousness literature. Like other modernist literary genres, it was created for the same reason. It was also a new literary territory that was excavated after people repositioned themselves in the new economic structure system in the 20th century when Western capitalism was highly developed.

The Western irrational philosophy and modern psychology that became popular in this social background provided theoretical basis for the creation of stream-of-consciousness literature. The irrationalism of French philosopher Bergson (1859~1941) emphasized that intuition is the only basis for understanding the ontology of the world. He believes that the ontology of the world is "life impulse", that is, "the duration of consciousness." Only it is the only driving force for the operation of the universe, and all objective things are nothing more than its external manifestations. Therefore, we can never grasp the essence of the world by relying on rational analysis. Only by relying on intuition can we obtain real knowledge, understand the world and solve all social problems. In his opinion, the subconscious should be the object of literary expression. Writers must go deep into people's inner world and even the subconscious field to grasp what reason cannot provide; break the traditional concept of time and structure works according to "psychological time". Another theorist who profoundly influenced modernist literature, especially stream-of-consciousness literature, was the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856~1939). His full affirmation of the subconscious and the unconscious undoubtedly opened up the creative thinking of stream-of-consciousness literature. His theories on the subconscious and unconscious mind in psychoanalytic theory are intended to counter the traditional concept of "human beings are rational animals". It is believed that the subconscious mind and even the unconscious are the basis of human vitality and conscious activities. Human behavioral motivations come from human instinctive impulses; human instinctive impulses are often constrained by social norms and rational conscience, making people full of contradictions. The writer's creative activity is the process of breaking through rationality and unleashing instinctive impulses, thereby releasing the suppressed instincts.

The term stream of consciousness is obviously extremely useful when used to describe psychological processes, because as a rhetorical term it has a dual metaphorical meaning, that is, the word "consciousness" and the word "flow" All have metaphorical meanings. This idea provides a theoretical basis for novelists to use stream-of-consciousness techniques to show people's inner world, and to complete novel narratives by showing the characters' conscious activities. The stream of consciousness in novels refers to the imitation of the characters’ continuous flow of consciousness by the novel’s narrative process. Specifically, it takes the character's conscious activities as the structural center, and around the character's seemingly randomly generated and loosely logical consciousness center, all scenes of the character's observations, memories, and associations are combined with the character's feelings, thoughts, and Emotions, desires, etc. are intertwined and superimposed to display, accurately describing the flow of consciousness of the characters "as is". In the history of modern Western novels, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Faulkner, Kafka, etc. are all famous for their successful use of stream of consciousness.

In the opening chapter of "To the Lighthouse" by British writer Woolf, Mrs. Ramsay tells her son James to go see the lighthouse tomorrow. However, Ramsay came over, stood in front of the living room window and said, "It won't be sunny tomorrow." His words inspired a famous stream of consciousness novel. The next paragraph of the novel can be said to be an example of a stream of consciousness novel.

In this paragraph, Woolf writes about James' psychology. When the boy grows up, he may put on a red robe and sit on the judge's bench, as his mother imagined. But now he is only 6 years old, and the most important thing is to sail for a day to see the lighthouse. He had extreme psychological reactions to his father's words:

First, he was particularly resentful of his father, which is what he wrote at the beginning of the previous paragraph;

Second, he felt that his father was far inferior to him. Mother, this sentence is inserted in the first bracket.

His first psychological reaction comes from the second, or the second comes from the first. It doesn’t make much difference. The psychology of a 6-year-old child is sometimes like this.

This wonderful paragraph is more about Mr. Ramsay’s psychology.

The first is a sarcastic dig at his wife and son. He appreciates the disappointment and annoyance he causes others. He was as thin as a knife, as thin as a blade, and he grinned evilly.

The second is that he believes that what he says is true. He thinks that he is always right, so he will not flatter anyone perfunctorily, but will use a sharp tone to ridicule him. The words in the second bracket seem to be inserted into his actions, but in fact, what we see are his physical postures triggered by his psychology.

The third is his strong will, and he especially needs to maintain this feeling.

Fourth, his mind is immersed in distant and abstract things, which is also the philosophical atmosphere pursued by most stream-of-consciousness novels. For example, before and after the second bracket, our brightest hope will be extinguished, and our fragile boat will be drowned in the vast darkness. (Later in the novel, Mrs. Ramsay also said that there is a darkness below our images, boundless and unfathomable; we only occasionally surface, and you know us by this.)

Speaking of stream-of-consciousness novels, we will notice one thing: there is a particularly concentrated period for the production of famous stream-of-consciousness novels: the 7-volume "In Search of Lost Time" by the French writer Proust, published in 1913- During 1927. "Ulysses" by Irish writer Joyce was first published in 1922. British writer Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" was written in 1927, and American writer Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" was written in 1929. These are works from the first two decades of the 20th century.

Another point, we will also notice that the standard of classic stream-of-consciousness novels is quite high. Needless to say, Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Proust's masterpiece "In Search of Lost Time" is hailed as one of the most important literary works of the 20th century and has become popular around the world. As a representative work of stream-of-consciousness novels, Joyce's "Ulysses" is hailed as the greatest novel of the 20th century. Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" is the most perfect work among stream-of-consciousness novels.

There is a strange phenomenon in stream-of-consciousness novels. The authors of world classics are generally genius writers, and the same is true for stream-of-consciousness novels. But only stream-of-consciousness novels require genius-level readers. That is, gifted readers share the stream-of-consciousness novel, and other readers stop at its threshold.

We don’t know why? But we know the result. Genius writers no longer write pure stream-of-consciousness novels with little to no main plot. In fact, after World War II, the rhythm of the times changed, people's mentality changed, and the group of readers who sat in front of the window with a pot of tea and read novels over and over again disappeared. Not just stream-of-consciousness novels, but many modern genres of fiction have become depressed.

In fact, many techniques of stream-of-consciousness novels have become part of the literary tradition. You should know that before the advent of stream-of-consciousness novels, human consciousness was flowing. After the disappearance of stream-of-consciousness novels, human consciousness is still flowing. Human consciousness is like a river, not connected piece by piece, but in a state of eternal flow.

If you want to describe the psychology of a character in a novel, it is still a superior way to use the flow of the character's consciousness to write. For example, grasp the dynamics of the flow of consciousness, take into account both the conscious and subconscious levels, and use inner monologue and free association. In addition, when structuring chapters and organizing stories, your narrative can be in a classical way of moving forward in a straight line in chronological order, or in a modern way of following conscious activities and through free association.

For example, Mo Yan's novella "Red Sorghum" was influenced by Faulkner's novels. Mo Yan once wrote an article about Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury", in which he wrote: After reading the last two lines of the fourth page, "I no longer feel the coldness of the iron door at all, but I can still smell the dazzling The smell of cold." I closed the book when I saw this, as if old man Faulkner patted me on the shoulder and said: Okay, no need to read anymore, just write!

"As I Lay Dying" is a novel with a unique style. In this book, Faulkner chose not to use a single first person or third person to describe a rural family embarking on a journey full of setbacks and hardships in order to bury their deceased mother. Instead, the monologues of 15 characters are staggered into 59 chapters in the book. Creating a scattered, decentralized narrative. These characters are mainly family members, but there are also other characters encountered along the way. It seems that in these intertwined monologues, readers not only feel how the shadow of the death of their loved ones lingers and lingers in the hearts of each character, but also creates a detached experience of lingering and lingering among each character in this narrative.

The decentralized narrative style makes this novel difficult to read. It’s easy to lose sight of the plot of a story due to the presentation of multiple perspectives. It became necessary to turn over and over, look at the character relationship table, and read different statements over and over to organize and sort out the whole story. From this perspective, "As I Lay Dying" is like a large and complex "In the Bamboo Forest", with everyone describing what they saw and their thoughts about others. Sometimes they overlap and echo each other, and sometimes they seem to be divergent plots, allowing readers to glimpse hidden details. Interestingly, although each chapter is a monologue of a character, this monologue, although it is a monologue, often seems to be about something other than himself.

In fact, the character rarely describes his own psychology, but always describes in detail and profoundly the scenery he sees and the conversations and behaviors of other people. In some incredible moments, characters speculate on other people's emotions and spirits, and even talk about the scenery and magical images seen in other people's eyes.

"Kash liked to saw the long, sad yellow days into bits of wood and nail them into something... (On the other hand) I don't think Dahl would have found out, sitting at dinner He was at the table, looking past the food and table lamp, all he could see was the land dug out of his head, and the caves in the distance beyond that land."

We don't know. I want to ask, how does a character know what is happening in other people's hearts? And be able to describe it so vividly? In another chapter, Dahl, who went to the city to deliver goods, even narrated the situation that happened at night at home in the countryside. It seems that in this book, each character is like an author, who at some moments has an omniscient perspective beyond the text, and then shadows overlap each other and stretch out new shadows.

Another effect brought about by decentralized narrative is the stagnation of the novel’s sense of time. Because to the reader, each incident seems to be very long and endless through the narration and description of each other by different characters. Wandering and wandering, lingering and lingering...

"We continue to move forward, with an extremely drowsy, dreamlike dynamic, as if it is impossible to deduce the conclusion of the progress, as if the distance between us and the destination is shortened It’s not space, it’s time.”

Funeral is a kind of movement, but this movement seems to be resisting itself through the process of movement. Although people are moving, their spirits fall into a trance because of the habit of moving, like riding a slow train, lingering in a place where they don't know where they are. Faulkner believed that this "place" where the spirit lingers is not a kind of space, but a kind of time where people get lost and "trance".

"He lowered his head and looked out through the dripping water, as if looking out through the eye shields of armor. His eyes traveled long through the entire village and reached the cliff nestled on the cliff. The barn next to it is like knocking out an invisible horse through his eyes.”

Through the eyes of each character, Faulkner captures the various “deaths” of the characters in this book. ”, a moment of ecstasy like the one in the quote. In these moments, dying becomes a kind of insight and a kind of trance. I have a goal but seem to have lost my direction.

Nostalgia is like a lingering feeling, having a goal but losing a sense of direction. And makes people allow themselves to be enveloped in a sense of powerlessness. Try to stay in this kind of envelope in a past or imagined time and space. And that kind of "powerlessness" first targets the fact that a loved one has died. Interestingly, Faulkner said this:

"In the end you will understand that death is just an effect of the mind."

The shadow of family death hangs over the story the heart of each character. But Faulkner reminds us that dying is not the same as being dead, which is the state of losing life. But there are many things that can make us feel dead even if they don't kill us. In the novel, the mother of the children, Aidi, is indeed dead. But her emotions and memories remain in the hearts of the characters just like the feeling of death. In addition, what makes readers suddenly feel horrified is that among the 59 chapters, one of them is the words spoken by the dead Aidi. It seemed that even though she died, her ghost still lingered. Among them, we can find that Aidi's marriage life is not happy. She thinks that she has fallen into a scam called "home". And what people call love is just an empty word, so that she can fill the lack in other people's hearts.

The shadow that husband Ans and their children suffered during the funeral process was not only caused by death, but also their debt to Aidi and Aidi's attachment to "family". The reciprocal effects of anger and dissatisfaction felt by obligations (the inability to give love). Let everyone hope that through this funeral, Aidi can "rest in peace".

Just as Shuji Terayama once wrote in "The Mystery of Me": "Death is just a fiction created by people in order to live." "Rest in peace" is also just a religious fiction. Eddie is indeed dead, but although everyone knows this fact, the elaborate preparations for the entire funeral imply that death is never as simple as just dying for people. Because maybe it’s not the dead who need “rest” at all, but those who are still alive. In this long funeral, the real funeral is not the love flute lying in the coffin, but the love flute still living in the hearts of the family.

The funeral has become a journey that allows people to linger, feel nostalgic, and experience the loss and grief, allowing them to remember the mother in their hearts in their own way. For Vardaman, the youngest son in the family who does not yet understand what death is, he does not believe that it is his mother lying in the coffin, and thinks that her mother must have turned into a fish and left this home that was not good to her. As long as he continues to fish every day, he will surely find his mother willing to come back in the river one day. Zhu Er, the third son whom Ai Di favored during his lifetime, transferred the grief of losing his mother to his favorite horse, as if his mother had become a horse for him, and he wanted to find happiness in the caress and companionship of the horse. Past attachment and admiration.

The eldest son of a carpenter, Cash didn't have much imagination about death, but he worked very hard to build a coffin to commemorate his mother. The second son Dar and the eldest daughter Du Wei maintained a certain indifference and detachment from their mother's death. On the one hand, Aidi was already desperate for life when she gave birth to Dar and never loved Dar seriously. Dar even said: "I didn't." Mother." On the other hand, Du Wei did not dare to tell his mother because of the dark knot, so he endured the pressure alone and avoided his mother's care. And her husband Ans, just like Eddie's confession, although he is alive, he is actually dead long ago. Devastated, he just wanted to send his deceased wife to her hometown: Jefferson City, even if the bridge in the way was broken due to the storm and it would take many days of troublesome journey.

If we can be so immersed in our respective memories and attachments, this journey may also be positive for each other. But God did not allow this to happen. The characters in the story all end up miserable. While forcibly crossing the river, the Bundren family had an accident. All the mules pulling the cart drowned, and Cash broke his leg. In order to continue the journey, Zhuer's favorite horse was sold by Ans without permission. Dahl later went crazy and was arrested after burning down a barn. Du Wei secretly wanted to buy medicine to have an abortion, but was abducted. Vardaman also failed to get the little train he longed for. Although Ans finally revealed his selfish purpose (remarrying), Faulkner's writing only makes us feel that he is still a sad person.

1. The character is a metaphor for the fate of the family. Parents are the biggest tragedy of the family

① Mother Addie’s ego and narrow-mindedness create the tragic life of the children

Regarding the deceased mother Addie, the author only gave her a monologue, but the concise description revealed a lot of information and laid the foundation for Addie's central character in this novel.

In section 40 of the novel, Eddie’s inner monologue when he was teaching in primary school is described:

I always expect those students to make mistakes, then I can whip them with a whip them. Every time I was whipped I would think: Now you know how powerful I am! Now I am part of your secrets and selfishness, now my blood is marked in your blood forever and ever.

Addie vented all her hatred for her father on the students. This short inner monologue of hers before marriage seemed casual, but in fact it revealed her rebellious tendencies brought about by her native family. On this basis, we can understand some of Eddie's repressed emotions and behaviors after marriage, and we will have a clearer context.

After marriage, Eddie regarded having children as "marriage retribution". After giving birth to the second child, he wanted to kill her husband. Even though she gave birth to five children, she never killed them. Treat it as your own flesh and blood. She rejected her students, her husband, her children, and at the same time, she rejected life itself.

Life without love as a premise has created a tragedy in the lives of children. While they are chasing love, they refuse to give love to others. Everyone has an inner demon living in their heart, either cowardly or selfish or... Cruel, even crazy.

②The selfishness of his father Anse and his love for money are the huge driving force behind the family tragedy

After the death of his wife, Anse's yearning for a new life was far greater than the grief of losing his wife. When he confirmed that his wife had died, he incredibly suppressed his joy and shouted:

I can finally wear a pair of dentures!

In addition, when his wife was seriously ill, his only worry was that her medical treatment would cost him the money he had saved for dentures. Even when she was so ill that all that was left was a withered body, he was unwilling to take it. Give me a penny.

The language used to describe Anse's love for money as much as his life is full of tension, but it is also full of sadness that makes people cry. Unconsciously, he puts himself in it, and has a strong sense of substitution, thus feeling To the suffocation and despair that hit him

He regarded the children as labor, and the criterion to measure whether they were worthy of his second look was whether they could be more promising. The author describes his views on his second son, Dar, in his inner monologue:

There are always people in front of me trying to persuade me not to have him... Those people just want me to lack manpower, so they say that Dar always As he kept his head down and did his own thing, he always only saw the land in front of him.

He was even more indifferent to his younger son Wadman, who was born with intellectual problems:

Wadman walked around the corner of the house, with blood on his body and filth below his knees. Dirty as a pig. He probably chopped the fish up with an axe, or threw it on the ground for the dogs to eat. ...When he grows up, he will not be better than his brothers.

As you can see, the author describes Ans's monologue as innocent, as if you won't hurt me, and I don't want to hurt you, so he is alone. Precisely in this way, he more powerfully exposes his selfishness. . He doesn’t expect love because he doesn’t want to pay, but his wife and children are like demons cast by a curse, always making him pay hard and energy, but he regards this as a “price that he has to pay.”

Therefore, the unconscious self-protection of the two main characters creates a family tragedy. The author spends a lot of pen and ink describing their inner powerlessness and struggle, intending to reveal the couple's incompetence and self. The background of moral decay and human depravity in the family formed an airtight barrier and weaved a web for those five innocent children that they would never be able to break free of in their lifetime.

As we all know, character monologue is the main expression of stream-of-consciousness literature. A work is like a complex personality distribution map. However, if you follow the source, readers will not feel complicated. Instead, there was a surprise of sudden enlightenment.

It can be divided into three stages to interpret:

①Before Eddie’s death

Before Eddie’s death, the second son Dar looked at the family with the melancholy of a poet. Every member of the family was looking for a trace of unusualness among them. However, this family was unusually calm. It seemed that everyone was busy waiting for the moment when their mother died.

I saw that my eldest brother Kash was busy making a coffin for his mother all day long, but he didn't even want to get close to his mother's bed. Dahl said with glee:

Eddie could not have found a better carpenter, nor could he have laid down a more exquisite piece of wood. She will definitely trust and enjoy this coffin.

Everyone is doing their "duty" thing, but watching it makes people feel a chill rising from the bottom of their hearts. Echoing Eddie's own inner monologue.

The author uses an anti-ironic approach to evaluate Eddie's life without love. In the end, his value in the family is similar to that of a decoration, allowing each member to complete his or her own tasks.

② Sending Addie back to her hometown for burial

After Addie’s death, in order to fulfill her promise during her lifetime, the Bundren family transported her back to her hometown more than 40 miles away for burial. However, they encountered a flood on the way, the water submerged the bridge, and two mules, which were important tools, were drowned.

Addie’s husband Ans looked at the two drowned mules and kept muttering to himself:

There are no such unlucky people in the world. This is punishment. Yeah, but I don’t blame her, and no one can say that I blame her.

In fact, anyone can see Ansi's inner imbalance, but on the surface he has to pretend that he is a very dedicated husband. The author gives each character the right to speak and a monologue of self-judgment. This is one of the highlights of unconscious stream literature, like fully displaying the personality of each character, not saying good or bad, showing people side A and then side B, and finally reminding you, don’t forget there are Sides C and D

In the eyes of his second son Dar, Ans is like a living joke:

My father’s figure appears above us, looking very tall, like It was a crudely crafted figure carved out of miscellaneous wood by a drunken satirical artist.

The author describes the conflict between Dahl and his son in a very subtle yet representative way. It reflects the living conditions and moral dilemmas of the poor white people in the United States at that time. It is also a microcosm of the bottom characters in southern society.

③After Eddie was buried

After going through all kinds of difficulties and dangers, at the cost of losing two mules and having his eldest son Kash break a leg, Eddie was finally buried in his hometown. For peace. The series of strange and dramatic changes that followed made people feel even heavier.

Fearing that Dahl would expose his unwed pregnancy, his sister Du Wei reported him, which turned his original plan to set fire to his mother's coffin into a crazy act of revenge.

When Dahl was captured, he laughed endlessly as he looked at his brothers, sisters and father, happily enjoying the coveted bananas while sitting in the carriage. Next, Du Wei went to the pharmacy to buy abortion pills but failed, and was molested instead. Father Ans gained the most, getting dentures and bringing home a new wife.

Placing death and rebirth in a balanced ecological chain reflects the optimistic spirit of the author Faulkner, as he said when accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature:

I don’t want to accept the idea of ??the end of mankind... Man is immortal because his species will continue

Objectively speaking, the main theme expressed by the author is "It is better to die than live." "I would rather try my best to live than give up the freedom to live happily because of anyone.

3. Character behavior symbolizes the continuation of life and the diversity of human nature

In addition to the monologue, this novel uses metaphors, symbols and other descriptive techniques for character behavior to infer The origin and rationality of character personality. Among them, the description of the behavior of Dahl, Pearl and his father is the most classic:

Dahl has the most monologues. He is the main narrator of this novel, observing the behavior of his family and the words and deeds of others through his eyes. , the main theme of the performance is the most prominent, he is the pivot and promoter of the event.

He has a sentimental heart and has always longed for his mother's love, but his mother is only interested in his third son, Pearl, who had an affair with a priest. He said:

Because I don’t have a mother, I can’t love my mother.

On the other hand, he is very nervous about his seriously ill mother, always looking at her from a distance, for fear that she will disappear in the blink of an eye; while he is sarcastic about his elder brother who spends all day building a coffin for his mother, he is extremely Follow its progress and quality.

During the transportation, the bridge was delayed due to heavy rain. His mother’s body stinked in the hot July weather, but he desperately set a fire, hoping to end this meaningless incident as soon as possible. The absurd "corpse transport" operation.

Faulkner, the great American writer of stream-of-consciousness literature, showed people Dahl's entanglement and at the same time exposed his fragility and madness.

Love and hate go hand in hand, and no one can judge whether they are right or wrong.

Pearl is undoubtedly a special being in the family. His mother Eddie is distressed because of his thinness. Therefore, he has become Dar's biggest enemy. It should be said that he is the most qualified person in this family to be domineering and domineering, but because he got a horse, he secretly worked for others for several months.

After the mule transporting his mother's coffin died, under the cry of his father Ans, he took the initiative to exchange his beloved horse for two mules to continue transporting; when Dahl set fire to the coffin, he was desperate Rescued his mother's coffin from the fire and risked his life to protect it.

But after Dahl was reported, he shouted mercilessly:

Kill this bastard!

Is family affection strong or weak, cruel or soft and kind? Faulkner did not clarify this multiple family tragedy. He only showed the true side of the characters in their actions, leaving a large blank space for readers to think about.

In addition, the series of actions of father Ans after Addie's death also showed the diversity of human nature. After burying her successfully, he couldn't wait to put on dentures and bring back a new wife with a gramophone. .

With the arrival of the "new mother" and the unabated child in Du Wei's belly, the end of the novel becomes comic because of them. They also symbolize the continuation of life and seem to be a metaphor for a family. new life.

4. Symbolic representation of the main characters, Faulkner’s “poet madman” art

Dahl, the representative character in the novel, has the same talent as a poet as Faulkner himself. Dahl invented a poetic language with a rhapsodic color, and his poetic and sensitive heart is revealed in many places in the novel.

For example, describe the pleasure and scene of drinking water from a cedar barrel:

When I was a child, I began to understand that water is put into a cedar barrel. , the taste is much better. It tastes warm and cool, with a hint of fragrance, like the hot wind blowing through the fir trees in July... Before I drink the water, I might even see one or two stars in the gourd.

He will also think about some philosophies about existence:

In a strange room, you have to think about nothing to fall asleep. What were you before you thought about nothing? And when you fall asleep without thinking about anything, you are nothing. When you fall asleep, you no longer exist.

Dahl did not have much education, but his deep thinking and talent as a poet are actually the endorsement of the author Faulkner and a true epitome of him. From this perspective, Dahl, as the main character of the novel, actually represents the author himself.

Some critics pointed out: In his youth, especially when he was demobilized and returned home during World War I, Faulkner was like Dahl, with an eccentric personality and wandering around all day long. Faulkner was also writing poetry frequently during that time.

In 1929, the 30-year-old Faubert was still a loser in life. He could barely survive by relying on the support of his family and friends. He finally found a job as a handyman in the boiler room of a power plant. He had to work twelve hours a day and could only write after get off work.

This world-famous classic was completed in only about six weeks using the time he squeezed out of his twelve-hour workday. At that time, the economic crisis broke out in the United States, and the ensuing "Great Depression" swept away all classes of American life. As a result, for decades, the seemingly peaceful "North-South dispute" has rekindled conflicts, pointing directly at the internal conflicts between the North and the South that were already torn apart, and stimulating a new round of "shuffle."

In the words of critic Milgate:

"Faulkner's main purpose is rather to force the reader to see more of the characters and actions in the book than they appear at first glance. It requires or deserves to be read from a higher, more universal perspective, to understand the Bundren family and their adventures... It makes us gradually understand that, in a sense, it is about human endurance. A primitive allegory of ability, a tragicomic picture of the entire human experience.

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