Literature

Literature in the past and even in the contemporary world often incorporate political messages. Writers through their masterpieces incorporate their political views and observation. However they have different approaches in illustrating their political messages. William Faulkner is one of the most influential writers in 20th century who often used Southern setting with the stereotypical perceptions towards the Southerners. His writings affirm Southern identity and mock class conflicts that were apparent during his times. In his novel As I Lay Dying, Faulkner proved to be unusual in his ability to illustrate poor rural folk with dignity and poetic grandeur without ignoring their circumstances. The novel has been read as a poignant tribute to the rural southern values that has shape the characters and their interactions. The political views of Faulkner in this novel is presented in an objective way. Just like other group of cultures and people, Faulkner wants to depict that Southerners have their own weaknesses and strengths. It is then unjust to stay with the stereotypical ideas towards them because as people widens their human experience, they changed. Sharon Olds collection of poetry in her book The Gold Cell  though primarily illustrates the general human experience, but she also incorporates political issues with her accurate observation of people especially how women nowadays wrongly approached their womanhood and motherhood. Her poems however, with the use of language, is very stimulating and sensual. However, her political analogies with her powerful documentary is at superficial level. The intense feelings of her poetry makes her extreme emotional.  Apparently Faulkner and Olds depict their political messages differently-- Faulkner in an objective manner and Olds in an emotional level.

As I lay dying written by William Faulkner is told in stream of consciousness by 15 different narrators. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her familys quest to honor and fulfill her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. Anse, Addies husband, promised her that she will be buried in the town of Jefferson even though this is far more complicated than burying her at home.  The subsequent journey of struggles of her family to bury her corpse in her familys cemetery several miles away is presented comically yet provides stereotypical perceptions about poor Southerners with the unique character of each member of the family. The characters innocently contemplate issues of  love, death, identity and  the limitations of language . Moreover their actions, choices and adventures draw attention to rural life, repercussions of selfish desires and their heroic tendencies.

    The death of Addie Bundren inspires and motivates several characters, specifically the family members, to wrestle with the question of existence and identity. The characters of Addie, Anse and Dewey illustrates naivet and shallowness of some Southerners characters. During those times  shallowness  is often incorporated with the Southerners due to their uncivilized, conservative lifestyle and limited social orientation. Southerners are inevitably the center of mockery and comedy due to their ignorance and shallow desires. The three members Bundrens family members affirm these stereotypical perceptions towards the Southerners. However through the character of Chao and Darl, Faulkner highlights that Southerners can also be superior in terms of intellectuality. Despite their poor grammar and limited vocabularies, the characters express their thoughts with a sort of poeticism and though pointless at times, many characters in the novel are capable of acts of heroism despite their nave nature.

     Addie Bundre, whose death triggers the novels action, is a former school teacher whose bitter and loveless life causes her to transparently despises her husband  and consequently who invest all her love in her favorite child rather than in God and the rest of the family. Anse, the head of the Bundren family, is a poor farmer whose actions and thought patterns are overwhelmingly selfish. He wants to fulfill his wifes request not to make her happy but rather his desperation to bury his wife in Jefferson is due to the fact that he perceives going there as an excuse to get pair of false teeth. His laziness and poor childbearing skills seem to be largely responsible for the unfortunate predicaments of his children. His detachment and selfishness is ultimately illustrated when after the burial of his wife, he hastily remarries. Vardaman Bundren, the youngest child in the family, views her mothers death through the same lens with which he views a fish he has recently caught and killed. Though his ramblings tend to be annoying in the initial part of the novel, he proves to be a thoughtful and innocent child. Dewey Dell Bundren is the only girl in the family, favorite of Addie, and whose recent sexual experience left her pregnant. Increasingly preoccupied with anxiety and desperation, her mind is exclusively occupied with her pregnancy. The death of her mother is not fully noticed by her since she has own problems to attend. These three characters (Addie, Anse and Dewey) apparently illustrate some of Southerners shallow character and naivet.

    Darl Bundren however, the second child in the family, is extremely aware of details and so an example of pure intellectualism. He is perhaps the neutralizer due to his articulate character and objective narration. He knows that the journey to bury his mothers body in Jefferson is madness and so attempts to burn his mothers coffin in the barn in his desire to put an end to the disgrace of his other. Cash, the eldest in the family, is a skilled carpenter and is one the rare stable characters in the story. He builds a coffin however as his mothers death approaches. His act is perceived by some characters to be distasteful and discourteous. Cash in the novel is the epitome of patience and selflessness, almost to the point of absurdity. Cash refuses ever to complain about his broken, festering leg, allowing the injury to degenerate to the point that he may never walk again. These two characters emphasize that Southerners though have limited education and exposure are capable of independent thinking.

    In comparison to The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds however, As I  Lay Dying is far different in terms of literary approaches in illustrating its messages. Though both reflects family as the center of the plot and the narration, but relationships between parents and children are illustrated positively in Sharon Oldss   The Gold Cell . Death and life are forever intertwined in Oldss work, providing useful and optimistic insights about life while Faulkner in his novel centers on identity and the difficulty of very existence especially if people are dominated by ignorance and selfishness. The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds is confessional in nature that which directly express her views towards life through her experience. William Faulkner however uses stream of consciousness and characters to illustrate his messages. The themes are not directly stated instead he allows the readers to reflect and retrospect on its underlying themes. If the theme of death is in the background of As I Lay Dying, where the death of Addie inspires several characters to wrestle with the questions of existence and idenity, death is also particularly illustrated in Oldss poem The Father, though it is more in terms of reflection.

    In The Gold Cell, the narrator embraces life from childhood, to first love, to sex, to miscarriage, to birth, to pain and finally death. In her poems she consistently honors the dead whether they are victims of martyrdom and crucifixion or whether they die due to suicide, torture, execution and abandonment. She remembers in profound insights the death of his relatives, friends and lovers providing insights and deeper realizations towards it. Unlike the characters of William Faulkners As I Lay Dying who approach death as the end of everything, in Oldss poem  everything for her is sacred  and must be taken seriously. Oldss feels free to discuss anything and so discusses life in its entirety. If tension, impermanence and ignorance are the dominating force in Faulkners novel, in Oldss poetry, beauty and hope is its redeeming force. She notices the sacredness of the little things in the world, she celebrates the bodies of children, the body of a lover  as well as the body of a woman and its ability to give life and finally she celebrates the beauty and strength in each sex as they grow and mature. Apparently Oldss discusses life and human beings in its general beauty and nature while Faulkner focuses on a particular group of people, the Southerners. The Gold Cell makes aspects of everyday life-- from news items, childhood, death, family and sexuality its subject matter.
  
 In terms of literary style, As I Lay Dying is written in a series of stream of consciousness monologues, in which the characters thoughts are presented in uncensored chaos. This technique from Faulkner presents the characters psychology with much more complexity compared to a traditional narrative style. It forces the readers to work hard to understand the text, to take the pieces each character gives and to put it together to create wholeness since instead of presenting the narration with the objective framework of events, Faulkner provides unexplained allusions, jumble memories and images. In the Gold Cell however though it was written in the form of poetry, the narration is consistent. The only challenge is to how create or unleash a deeper meaning through the interpretation of poetic language and other poetic elements.

    Oldss work has a robust sensuality and delights in the physical world by which she incorporates meanings towards it. Her main subject for poetry is about the womens everyday life and other abstract themes that preoccupied other poets of her time. Since her writings is very personal, it is inevitable that she presented her views in an emotional level. Her poetry is derived from subjective consciousness in how she views different subject matters according to her own experience. Faulkner however is more objective by which his messages is more from those that are discovered rather than created. He allows the readers for multiple interpretations through his objective narration, presenting both the positive and negative tendencies of Southerners.