Irony in Faulkner. An Analysis of Stories and Individual Characters

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Wuppertal, language: English, abstract: Faulkner was born in Mississippi and spent almost his whole life there, in Lafayette County. This region served as example for his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, in which some of his novels are set. One of those is "As I Lay Dying" from 1930. It is the story of the Bundren family and its journey to Jefferson City to bury the wife and mother Addie, who dies in the first half of the novel. Their journey is made difficult due to several complications and incidents and hence gives insights into the characters thoughts and intentions.

In this work, Faulkner extended his complex methods which he had developed in his earlier books "Sartoris" and "The Sound and the Fury" both from 1929. These methods include an extensive use of irony. It serves to reveal the "profound similarities or ironic contrasts between the modern world and earlier times" and was part of Faulkner's experimental attempts to articulate the inexpressible aspects of individual psychology. In the following, I would like to examine the novel for this extensive application of irony by showing how it is created, and furthermore, explain its purpose, which is to bring the real personalities of the individual characters to light.