“As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner (post 10): Faulkner said he wrote his characters as he found them, and that they said and did what they wanted

Many readers and reviewers of this novel have two misconceptions. First, they believe that Darl, the first and most frequent first-person narrator, becomes insane in the course of the novel. Second, they believe that whatever Darl says or does was put into his mouth by, and was under the direction of, William Faulkner. But Faulkner said in interviews that neither of these things was true.

In one interview, Faulkner was asked “was Darl out of his mind all through the book? Or did that come as a result of things happening during the book?” Faulkner replied that “Darl was mad from the first” but “got progressively madder…” (1, p. 190).

In another interview, Faulkner said: “Darl was mad. He did things which it seemed to me he had to do or he insisted on doing. His reasons I could try to rationalize to suit myself, even if I couldn’t rationalize his reasons to please me I had to accept the act because Darl insisted on doing that. I mean that any character that you write takes charge of his own behavior. You can’t make him do things once he comes alive and stands up and casts his own shadow. Darl did things which I am sure were for his own mad reasons quite logical. I couldn’t always understand why he did things, but he did insist on doing things, and when we would quarrel about it, he always won, because at that time he was alive, he was under his own power” (1, p. 202).

When fiction writers say such things about the autonomy of their characters, people often think they are joking, because they say it so matter of factly. Why would they say such outlandish things so matter of factly unless they were joking? Because they have always had that kind of subjective experience, and they assume that other people have similar experiences, to one extent or another.

Autonomous characters are alternate personalities, and although most people do not have them, I have speculated that up to thirty percent of the general public does have what I call “multiple personality trait” to some extent. And that thirty percent is where fiction writers come from.

1. William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying [1930]. Edited by Michael Gorra. A Norton Critical Edition. New York, W. W. Norton, 2010.