Foucault and Faulkner

In As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, the omniscient narrator Darl can be analyzed with Foucault’s theory of Panopticism. The story is as follows, Addie Bundren in an attempt to get back at her husband for making her conform to society with multiple children and a loss of freedom, requests that after her death be buried in the town she was originally from, Jefferson, which is a week’s trip. With decaying body in tow, Addie’s husband and her children make the journey to fulfill her desire. The narrator, Addie’s second eldest son, is all knowing, all seeing, much like the supervisor in Foucault’s Panopticon. The family are very much in their cells, being watched until the tide changes ultimately reversing the roles. Darl becomes even more so, the outsider of the family and once this happens, he is sent away for mental help. The Panopticon idea encompasses two areas of focus. According to Foucault, “ The first is that of a pure community, the second that of a disciplined society” (Rivkin, 468). The need in society to categorize with binary division labels people as productive members of a society or parasites. For example those that are crazy as opposed to sane, those that are dangerous as opposed to harmless, and those that are normal in society as opposed to those that are abnormal (469). In Faulkner’s novel, Darl Bundren seems to threaten the pure community and disciplined society of the family. He is the least favorite of his deseased mother, hated by his half brother, despised by his sister, and also ultimately replaced by his brother as omniscient narrator. In looking at the Bundren family as a society, he becomes undisciplined and eratic as implied in some of his behavior. The family begins to view him as crazy and not in compliance with their norms. They use binary brandings dubbing themselves normal, where Darl is the abnormal one, although in my opinion he is the most sane. Because Darl is “abnormal” he is sent away to the hospital on the basis of insanity. At the beginning of the novel, Darl starts out as the supervisor in the middle of the panopticon. He watches everyone in their “cells” and thus is the all knowing narrator. However, once his family see’s that he is not acting like them in relation to determination in transporting his dead mother for burial, he breaks the normalcy’s of the family and therefore becomes himself in a cell, being watched. Foucault says, “ Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (470). This causes a change in power as Darl having power over the reader, is replaced by Cash. Not only is Darl sent away, but it is at this point the reader may question Darl’s reliability as a narrator.



Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 549-566.