Out of the many images Faulkner’s novels have impressed on me, a notable one is of Darl Bundren on the train beside his escorts in his last chapter. As a departing picture of Darl, it seemed reminiscent of a surrealistic work of art (perhaps a Rene Magritte or a Salvador Dali piece). The portrait invoked thoughts relating to economics and shellshock, revelations which are in jarring contrast to his lucidly eerie logical-illogical clairvoyance. The disclosure of Darl being a war veteran explains his pronounced monologues throughout the novel and his plunge into madness. The parting image of Darl in his last chapter ties into the larger theme of economics in the novel.
In his final section, Darl spirals into madness and makes some insanely interesting remarks. In third person he narrates the scene in which he finds himself in, “One of them sat beside him, the other sat on the seat facing him, riding backward. One of them had to ride backward because the state’s money has a face to each backside and a backside to each face, and they are riding on the state’s money which is incest” (254). Darl connects his position on the train car to the main avenue of capitalistic exchange: money. The face to each backside and backside to each face summons an image of the Roman deity Janus whose two faces symbolize the idea of duality. Faulkner represents each character in a dual manner (via point of view and first person narration), and the idea of duality is strongly evidenced in the end by Darl’s narrative split (first to third person). This duality and incest definitely ties to the theme of economics in two ways, microscopically and macroscopically. The theme of economics is prevalent in this novel microscopically with Anse Bundren as a lazy delegating figurehead who manages his children as employees (he’s also looking to replace his baby-maker) and the two-facedness is also represented in the ploy which Anse carries out. We see how under the pretense of Addie’s dying wish (and blathering about doing his Christain duty), the Bundren’s each individually seek out their desires in town which could suggest the two-sidedness of human behavior.
Speculatively, on a macroscopic scale, the revelation of Darl having fought in the war broadens the business which Anse intelligently devises. The state sought free military labor (drafts) at the cost of human lives. I suppose one can say that what Darl was exposed to in Europe namely aesthetics, art and the war crafted Darl’s character into one of clairvoyance. The war did its number on him, yet he isn’t mad in the beginning of the novel. It’s as the novel progresses and Darl’s witness of the self-absorbed Anse and the (embarrassingly) absurd situations his family finds themselves in (all due to the pursuit of a labor force/economics) that trigger the progression of Darl’s shellshock.
This brings up a correlation between Woolf’s Septimus Smith and Darl. Or at least an interesting thought, Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw were to Septimus “human nature” (Woolf 92) which was torturing him. Darl’s form of “human nature” lies in the beastiality of economics in which, “A nickel has a woman on one side and a buffalo on the other; two faces and no back” (254). Namely the duality of economics which is reflected in the Bundrens as selfishness which lies on top of the absurdity of the smelly coffin carrying the corpse of his mother.
