Adrian Says: William Faulkner Makes The Most Convoluted Stories Ever.

 The final blog of the Hero's Journey arc, oh how we've come so far. 

Throughout As I lay Dying, it is evident that the book travels through multiple perspectives, in no specific order. The question that I will be diving deep into this blog is can this type of narrative be considered as a hero's journey? In order to answer this question, let's look back at our journey on the hero's journey. 

Vardaman and Addie being fishy

So the hero's journey by Joseph Campbell has three main categories, separation, initiation, and return. As of writing this right now (11/18) we haven't reached that point where the characters of As I Lay Dying return to the "return" category, so it will be hard to judge unless I decide to edit this to include all of the plot of the hero's journey. We somewhat have a separation and initiation building up but it is not quite evident. Seeing how 40% of the book is about Addie, the mother who had passed away, I will look at the journey's main purpose as getting Addie's corpse/coffin to the place that she wanted to be buried at.  For the separation phase, we have our "call to adventure, refusal of the call, supernatural aid, and crossing the first threshold." The "call to adventure" doesn't appear as quick as the past two books that we have read, but I believe this step is when Addie has officially passed away. Although it can be said that the call could be when the coffin is finally finished, Cash gets the motivation to finish the coffin through night and rain once Addie was gone. So her death is essentially what causes Cash to finally finish up the coffin for the Bundren family to start setting out on their journey. 

There isn't an exact moment in the book where someone or something causes the "refusal of the call," but looking at how this refusal is some sort of fear that the hero runs away from, it can be said that Vardaman running away after Addie dies could be the refusal. After all, Vardaman does try to deny Addie's death by saying that "my mother is a fish." Later on, we see Vardaman trying to go fishing, perhaps for a new mom? While this refusal is a stretch from the previous books we have read, it certainly is a possibility. 

When the Bundren family leaves on their journey, the reader gets introduced to a new character perspective named "Samson." Throughout the chapter, we see that Samson isn't exactly a helpful guy until he gets peer pressured into bringing the Bundrens into his home to take shelter from the rain. Although Samson isn't supernatural, he can be considered the "supernatural aid" for As I Lay Dying. Once the Bundrens get back on the road, Dewey Dell points out a road sign saying that New Hope is a few miles away. New Hope could be considered the first threshold, since they still need to travel through New Hope to get to their destination.

Crossing the First Threshold might be more simple than the rest of these steps. Crossing the first "threshold" might be thought about as the part where Darl, Jewel and Cash all cross the river. In Darl's chapter before they cross the river, he mentions that Vernon, Anse, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell are the only things that are in sight on the other side of that river. This could indicate that everything beyond the river is new territory to them and only those people are familiar to them. As readers we can take this step even further by looking at the boys attempting to make it through the river. Seeing how the boys thought they could cross before they were hit by the log made them realize that perhaps not everything can go their way. While it doesn't state in the reading that they were people who thought they could get everything they want, we see that they always persevere through their lowest of lows and get back onto their feet again. The First Threshold of the hero's journey is meant to prepare the hero for their actual journey so maybe this scene with the river is preparing them for the journey across New Hope.

While there is still the whole departure and return phase of the hero's journey, I believe that even with a story that contains multiple perspectives, we can still have a hero's journey.