Wastelandism In As I Lay Dying

T. S. Eliot is the greatest writer of modern free verse in Anglo-American poetry and the most influential practitioner of Anglo-American literary Criticism. The Waste Land is one of his most famous works whose titles are icons of modernism. The term "The Waste Land"is often applied by critics in reference to the disillusion and alienation that assemble modernist and post-modernist writings into a thematic group. This dissertation holds that this very theme, defined herein as "Wastelandism", is one of the literary traditions in English literature, and that it becomes the dominant literary vision throughout the interwar years and beyond. The dissertation explores Wastelandism, namely, alienation and ungroundedness, despair and skepticism in Yoknapatawpha, a symbolic barren wasteland in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Wastelandism in As I Lay Dying, this dissertation maintains, is caused by the distance and impossibility of communication between individuals when their faith in good gives way to decadent practice. It is manifested not only as a sense of alienation and disillusionment that members of the Bundrens experience but also as the hurt they inflict on one another. The hurt, in turn, stimulates the sense of alienation among them. In addition, the pious followers of Evangelism are satirized to expose the absurdity of their spiritual world. As a result, the journey is a burial of a decomposing body, of the Bundrens and of God. Death doesn't only mean the collapse of an individual, but also that of a family and the decadence of a value. In terms of structure, the dissertation consists of five parts. Introduction briefs on Wastelandism's definition and its existence in some landmarks in literature, for instance, Shakespeare's tragic heroes, Thomas Hardy's characters in doomed Wessex, the disillusioned veterans of Lost Generation and T. S. Eliot's "hollow men"in The Waste Land. The dissertation acknowledges Faulkner's indebtedness to these works with regards to their influence of "wastelandism", and gives the thesis statement here. Chapter I studies the literary and cultural context of the novel. It is a general survey of the historical and literary influences which shape Faulkner both as a regionalist and as a modernist writer, highlighting that wastelandism in As I Lay Dying bears the unique feature of the historical and cultural features of the South. Though set in the deep South, the human existential reality it presents is universal. Chapter II is a careful scrutiny of wastelandism in As I Lay Dying. It explores the horror of life Faulkner demonstrates: a barren land that can hardly feed a family of wastelanders, who suffer from emotional paralysis and insanity, stunted lives and poisonous relations. To put it alternatively, this part studies Yoknapatawpha as an environmental waste land, and Yoknapatawpha as a spiritual waste land. The depiction of the environment and the rough authenticity of the location for the characters create an atmosphere of naturalism that is meant to give force to the rigorously pessimistic view of the life in Yoknapatawpha. In their spiritual world, the Bundrens are perceived as a family of hearts of loneliness and hearts of darkness; each member is a victim of the waste land, who alienates others, and is, in turn, alienated by others. Eventually, the family collapses with each member dying metaphorically in his own way. In addition, the fragmentations and multiple voices are effectively used to convey the theme. Chapter III focuses on "death"as a theme in the novel. The dissertation maintains that "death"is generic in the novel, not only referring to the physical decomposition and spiritual degeneration of individuals, but also to the collapse of a family and to the degeneration of the convention that Evangelicalism dominates. Evangelicalism turns the morality of Christianity against itself. The compassion and sacrifice of Christianity is either misinterpreted or taken advantage for personal ambitions by the hypercritical Evangelists or violated by disillusioned nihilists. Withold beliefs at stake when confronting the change, God commits suicide. In conclusion, Wastelandism is stressed through a summary of the dissertation. As I Lay Dying is a tour de force with a virtuosity in the depiction of people wasting away in Yoknapatawpha, which is symbolic of the South, and it succeeds in harvesting terror and grandeur of classical Greek tragedy from this implausible journey of the Bundrens, whose predicament is both sectional and universal. As a humanist writer with a "binary mind,"Faulkner reveals in As I Lay Dying his courage to recognize the devastating force of the evil and his hope for the good.