Yay or Nay

        

        In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner tells the story in a way that breaks the rules of the heroes journey. The book jumps between characters’ thoughts, scrambles the order of events, and often leaves out or twists important details. Because of this fragmented style, it’s hard to say the story fits the hero’s journey, which, as Wikipedia describes, is a common story pattern where one main hero goes on an adventure, faces challenges, and returns transformed. Adding to this unconventional approach, Faulkner famously wrote the entire novel “in six weeks without changing a word” (Faulkner 264). This quick and unpolished process suggests that Faulkner wasn’t concerned with carefully planning or revising the story to fit a traditional structure. Instead, he seemed more focused on capturing emotions and the messy, chaotic perspectives of his characters. With its unique style and quick writing process, As I Lay Dying doesn’t follow the traditional steps of the hero’s journey.

        The hero’s journey, as explained on Wikipedia, follows a clear structure where a hero embarks on an adventure, faces a crisis, and returns home changed. This type of story builds carefully, with each event logically following the last. In contrast, Faulkner’s style in As I Lay Dying is almost the complete opposite. The novel is filled with fragmented thoughts, constantly shifts between different characters, and presents events in a jumbled, out-of-order way. For instance, it jumps from surreal statements like “My mother is a fish” to detailed descriptions of a coffin or strange, philosophical reflections (Faulkner 84). These scattered and chaotic elements show that Faulkner wasn’t trying to follow the hero’s journey's traditional framework. Faulkner also centers the story on multiple characters rather than a single main hero, which makes it difficult to align with the hero’s journey framework showing he had no intention of this being a hero's journey to begin with

        Furthermore, Faulkner’s skepticism about traditional storytelling is reflected in Addie Bundren’s statement, “That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say” (Faulkner, 172). This line reveals a distrust of language’s ability to fully capture the meaning of the fragmented and chaotic style of the novel itself. By including this perspective, Faulkner seems to acknowledge the limitations of storytelling and question whether his own work is meant to fit into any conventional narrative framework, such as the hero’s journey. Addie’s belief that words fail to express what they intend parallels with the novel’s disjointed structure, where events are jumbled, perspectives are scattered, and no single hero emerges. This reflects Faulkner’s broader rejection of clear, structured storytelling, reinforcing the idea that As I Lay Dying is intentionally messy and wasn’t intended to follow the path of the hero's journey. 

        In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner breaks away from Joseph Campbell's hero's journey templates, making it hard to see the hero’s journey in the story. His fast writing process, the scattered and jumbled structure, and the focus on many characters instead of one central hero all go against the clear steps of the hero’s journey. Addie Bundren’s statement about words being useless shows that Faulkner may not have been trying to create a meaningful, structured story. Instead, the book is messy and chaotic on purpose, showing the complicated emotions and struggles that the characters face. Because of this, I don’t think As I Lay Dying follows the hero’s journey.