Diction

Diction
In William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, Faulkner fictionalizes the journey of the Bundren family to burry their dead mother. The book is told from many different character perspectives and one of the many ways Faulkner differentiates his characters’ voices and also strangely unifies them is by his use of diction. His stylistic use of odd, surreal pairings of word help o create a harsh, nightmarish tone. “How do our lives ravel out into the no-wing, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-strings: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.” (163) The use of words like “dead gestures” and phrases like “lives ravel out into no-wing, no-sound, the weary gesture…” give the impression of smallness and a lack of control as well as a sort of accepted doom. "We go on, with a motion so soporific, so dreamlike as to be uninferant of progress, as though time and not space were decreasing between us and it." The use of latodie in the phrase “not space” help to further impress upon the journey of the Bundrens a sense of futility. Though the characters do have distinctive ways of describing events and telling their own side of it, Faulkner also uses repetition through out all of his characters’ perspectives to give a sort of emphasis on what the characters find important and what themes the book tries to portray. In a sort of innocent confrontation, Darl asks who Jewel’s father was. Jewel and Darl go on, ‘“You goddamn lying son of a bitch.” “Don’t call me that,” I say. “You goddamn lying son of a bitch.” “ Don’t you call me that, Jewel”’(166). This example of repetition exploits Jewel’s hurt and hostility of being a bastard child and the dysfunction between the half brothers.