The Complex Relationship Between Darl and Dewey Dell

The Complex Relationship Between Darl and Dewey Dell As I Lay Dying, the novel written in 1930, by William Faulkner shows his interesting yet quite odd style of writing and the characters that seem to travel from novel to novel. Faulkner creates a very odd and complex relationship between Darl and Dewey Dell Bundren, two of the main characters in As I Lay Dying. Both characters seem to have poor communication skills and they both have lost empathy after the loss of their mother Addie Bundren. The poor communication skills and lack of empathy have drastically changed the relationship between the two characters and their late mother, the relationship between themselves, and the way they treat others around them. These changes make their adventure to Jefferson to bury Addie difficult and slightly uncomfortable. The change in the relationship between Darl and Addie within the novel As I Lay Dying does not change too drastically. Darl does not seem to be Addie’s favorite child, but like any typical mother she loves all of her children. Throughout the novel Darl brings up a recurring thought in his mind, “I cannot love my mother because I have no mother. Jewel’s mother is a horse.”(iBooks) He realizes that he was alienated as a child because his mother was a different person when she gave birth to him than when gave birth to Jewel, his half-brother, and he lingers on the thought that Jewel is so different from the rest of the Bundrens. But Dewey Dell’s relationship between her and her mother drastically changes once she becomes pregnant with her lover Layfe’s child. Her mind is only focused on how to rid herself from the responsibility of becoming a mother out of wedlock. Dewey Dell really goes into Jefferson to receive medicine to cause an abortion. In As I Lay Dying both Darl and Dewey Dell have radically changed their opinions about themselves. Darl does not refrain from thinking about how he is more intelligent and observant than all of the

Cited: Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text. New York: Vintage, 1990. iBooks.