As I Lay... Without a Hero's Journey?

 William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, while having fragments of a Hero’s Journey I do not believe it follows this model coherently enough to tie it to that narrative. The key feature of the book is that the story constantly switches between characters and their perspectives, all with different views of reality and all with pieces of a Hero’s Journey. While this structure for a story is very compelling, I think this quality is also its weakest point because the story progresses so slowly since it goes through all these different characters. Thus, saying that the story follows the Hero’s Journey because it shows subtle characteristics is a huge reach. Hero’s Journey is modeled after one main character or hero figure, that's not to say it can’t be about multiple people, however, I’d like to argue that As I Lay Dying is too separated between characters to characterize them as one person going on the journey. It's very clear in the “Separation” phase of Joseph Campbell's Hero’s Journey that it is such a stretch to say this book’s storyline follows the Hero’s Journey because of the lack of a threshold in “Crossing the First Threshold” and the individual, and very separate, Character Development that the characters experience.

The description of “Crossing the First Threshold” by Joseph Campbell is that its a part in the narrative where the singular “person” leaves “the known limits of his or her world and [ventures] into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.” The biggest part of this description that stands out to me is the part about how the rules and limits are not known, as in the new world is very new and different. This is not what is seen in As I Lay Dying, as Darl and his family stay with a familiar person, Armstid. On page 181 it states, “You’re welcome to the house,” Armstid said.”, this person is not of the unknown at all. To backtrack a bit, while the family is actually undergoing the part of the narrative commonly depicted as “Crossing First Threshold” (the river they have to cross), the family’s priorities are all over the place. This is another reason why having multiple heroes overcomplicates the Hero’s Journey and only scraps of the story end up actually following the model, as each individual character has different motives, particularly during this part. A lot of them experience setbacks, such as Cash who on page 156 is going through an injury due to the river (due to Crossing First Threshold), “Cash lies on his back on the earth…He lies pole-thin in his wet clothes, a little pool of vomit at his head”. Cash’s Hero’s Journey looks a lot more different than the others now, and he's not the only one. Because of this discontinuity and lack of collectiveness for this point in the story (and many others), but also the very loose connection to the Hero’s Journey model, As I Lay Dying from a technical standpoint, isn’t following the Hero’s Journey.

Elements of the Hero’s Journey are seen in all types of stories, not just ones with a hero in it. Character development is when a character changes or embarks on a journey of self-change and has qualities similar to the hero’s journey. However, what sets the Hero’s Journey apart from a narrative such as a character’s own Character Development is that the figure is changing the world in some way or actually being a type of hero figure. So far in As I Lay Dying not one of these characters shows a hero role that aligns with the Hero’s Journey.  Each of the characters experience events very contrasting to each other that it is hard to say they are a collective, elements like these are not phases of the Hero’s Journey but instead just character development. For example, interpreting Cash’s leg being broken or him almost drowning as a trial. Because this book is so scattered if we were to think of each of the character’s experiences as one, then anything could be considered a trial or any experience could be told as a part of the Hero’s Journey.

What I have read is nothing more than Character Development of the different characters the story separately follows. They each have changed in their own way, experienced different things, and changed because of it. Not because of a Hero’s Journey exposing them to “trials”- obstacles are common in life, if it was all easy then no one would want to read it. As I Lay Dying has a narrative that is too contrasting between characters to even consider that it is a Hero’s Journey. While each of the characters or as a collective experience things that may resemble one phase of the model, there are too many instances of inconsistencies and very personalized experiences to say each of them are apart of the same Hero’s Journey, or one at all.

Work Cited 

Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. New York City, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 201