words to inspire before you expire

Tag: Narrator (Page 2 of 2)

Missing From the List: As I Lay Dying

Good morning, class,

Whenever I think of American authors from the early 20th Century, three come to mind: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner (there are more, but it takes a few more seconds for them to kick in—I wasn’t there, you see). I have my preferences among the three of them, but in my mind, the three are equals.

Well, the constructors of the 50-books list did not consult me before choosing books. Fitzgerald’s widely-known The Great Gatsby and Hemingway’s lesser-known Men Without Women feature prominently on the list, but Faulkner doesn’t appear at all. Today, I will be remedying that oversight.


Yoknapatawpha County, Faulkner’s fictional Southern landscape

As I Lay Dying is the kind of novel that needs to be studied with a guide waiting nearby. It’s also the kind of novel that needs to be read at least twice to be fully appreciated. (Maybe there is a good reason it didn’t make the list.) Even so, it’s one of the most groundbreaking novels I’ve ever read.

The story is about the Bundren family honoring their deceased mother’s wishes: to be buried in a distant town. Being a poor Southern family in the 1920s, accomplishing the task is difficult. The journey takes many days, and the family survives many perilous events—a dangerous river crossing, a barn burning, violence between each other—until it becomes less and less meaningful to bury the body at all. By the end, secrets are revealed, siblings betray each other, and any semblance of happiness seems more distant than ever.

But the way it’s told is the novel’s genius: each chapter specifies a different character as the narrator, and they each tell the story in a different way. Darl, the second oldest sibling, has the most chapters and seems to be the best storyteller, with his own biases. Cash, the oldest, has a practical and structured mind, and tells his chapters plainly—one chapter of his is a list explaining how he made his mother’s coffin. Vardaman, the youngest, uses short, choppy sentences and leaves out key things he can’t understand. The rest of the family and several other characters get their own chapters, too, throwing out any stability we can have in the facts.

Even Addie, the mother, gets her own chapter—after her death. She reveals which of her children is not her husband’s, and expresses her struggles with marriage and motherhood. It’s her ideas about language that tell us WHY the novel is so complicated: “That was when I learned that words are no good; that words don’t ever fit even what they are trying to say at…He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack” (Faulkner).


William Faulkner, author

For me, this novel defines the unreliable narrator. Everyone is looking at the same events and recounting a different story. Addie’s words are the least reliable of all—she’s either out of the order of events, coming back from the past to tell her story, or she’s aware of the struggles of life only from within her own rotting body, closed off from life by the coffin her son built. Even then, she is the key to understanding the problem in their family: they can’t communicate. They are all trapped in their silent thoughts and failing words.

Many of the novels I’ve read from the 50-books list have similarly unreliable narrators—The Canterbury TalesThe Color Purple, and The Catcher in the Rye, to name a few. It’s one of the best concepts in literature, to know that the person telling you the story can’t be trusted. It tips the hierarchy…if even the person telling the story can’t be trusted, what can we rely on? If there’s no stability in the story, it begs questions about every detail. Those questions get closer to the truth than statements ever do.

As I Lay Dying does this really well. Maybe too well…and that’s why it didn’t make the list.


As usual, tell me what you think—what novels should be added to the list? What book should every person read before they die? Come, broaden our horizons. What else is class for?

Until next time,

Prof. Jeffrey

The Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye (1951) Book Cover

The Catcher in the Rye (1951): Book Cover

Hello again, class.

Back when I wrote about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I talked about children being mistreated and not fitting in with Victorian England’s rules. Wonderland is a metaphor for the strangeness of adulthood; Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is less figurative and more realistic, but it makes a similar claim for adulthood. The real tragedy of The Catcher in the Rye is not that children are mistreated; it’s that they are ignored.

Let’s look more closely…


The hero of the hour is Holden Caulfield (officially one of my least favorite names), a sixteen year-old kicked out of yet another prep-school for failing every class but English. Over the course of three days, Holden bails from his dorm and takes a strange journey around New York, involving everything from nuns and cab drivers to prostitutes and pimps, eventually finding his way home.

Unlike in Alice, whose helpful narrator helps explain Alice’s predicament, Holden is always speaking directly to us. As a sixteen year-old, he is explicit with language and content, but there are also things Holden deliberately leaves out. He is trapped in his own head, and he isn’t aware of what’s happening to his psyche. That means this book is meant to be deciphered (puzzles!!).

First Lines and an Illustration

The Catcher in the Rye: First Lines and an Illustration

Speaking of what was meant to happen, Salinger’s intentions were especially interesting. This book was written for adults, as a way of revealing the emotions and thoughts of children that society ignores. This makes Holden’s age a careful choice—he is beyond childhood innocence, but he shuns maturity and adulthood, so he is caught in the middle. As a result, Catcher has become an inspiration for teenagers in rebellion; Holden’s violent thoughts, potent imagination, and social aversion became rallying cries for teenagers that feel ignored, want to be left alone, and hate the established order of the world (as stereotypical these attributes sound, part of Salinger’s point is that rebellious teenagers are not a stereotype).

Salinger’s intentions were also tragically misunderstood in the resulting attacks on President Ronald Reagan and John Lennon. I haven’t been able to research the full extent of these stories, but both attacks are said to be inspired by The Catcher in the Rye. For an extra frightening factor, the movie Chapter 27 is a fictionalized account of the assassination of John Lennon, named for the 26 chapters in Salinger’s novel.


But in the end, these external facts have clouded the importance of the novel itself. I was reading it for the first time and expected some kind of violent, tragic end, especially with all of the references to his own insanity and the recurrence of his red hunting hat as a symbol. Fortunately, the story is not so predictable. If you read it yourself, I recommend leaving an open mind about what kind of person Holden is—don’t just sympathize with his isolation, but empathize with his quest.

And yes, there is a quest—even if its not on the surface. Holden’s quest is about happiness. No matter what physically happens to him, he is searching for something to take comfort in…something to give him hope and peace. Underneath Holden’s chaotic odyssey is a relatable emotional journey.


I’d like to hear from you: what were your own thoughts on Catcher in the Rye? It’s gone from banned reading to studied carefully in high school classes, so I look forward to the spectrum of thoughts here.

Next up, I’m reading The Grapes of Wrath, another kind of odyssey. I hated it in high school, but I look forward to giving it another chance. Some things can’t be enjoyed in high school.

Until next week,

Prof. Jeffrey

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