"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home."
I am just about 1/3 of the way through As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. This is the second book on my list that is also a book I am teaching in class, and, just like the previous times I've read it, I have realized that if you read Faulkner for too long, you begin thinking like his characters. The book is told in 52 chapters, by 15 voices, with each chapter signaling a change in POV. Everytime it switches, you have to slightly rewire your brain to fit the character. Everytime you finish a chapter, you have to step out of that characters head.
I believe it is fitting then, that one of the main characters is apparently psychic (though some students proclaim he's probably just making it up). It seems so very appropriate that a character fits the same role that the reader does; to be inside the head of a boy who has watched his mother's dying breathe, but not have the words to explain, or even understand it; to see a girl watch her mother slip away, as she also, very recently find herself soon to be a mother herself. It has taken me a few times (I believe this is the fourth), but I believe i can now read this book for pleasure, with minimal extra work.
I was inspired by the quote at the beginning of this post though, and i feel it is best to be responded to. Darl is far from home, knows that is mother has passed on while he has been gone, and is laying down thinking big thoughts. Although he is one of the stranger characters (if that is even possible), I do not think it is an accident that he is the one character that audience has the most time to relate to. Inside all of us, I think there is a little crazy.
