Faulkner’s need for fifteen individual narrators suggest his need for fifteen different views of every situation. From Darl he obviously wants a character that is more isolated from the others that will be able to mediate between the hectic events of the characters and the understanding of the reader. Jewel on the other hand brings out the more disturbed side of Faulkner’s imagination. He is the illegitimate child of Addie and the minister giving him a predisposed sense of being an outcast. His neurotic qualities include being impatient and ill tempered although his love for horses represents a more gentle side. These characters, when compared, often represent far extremes of perspective although the also show similar ideals on the subjects of luck and fate, honor and dishonor, as well as life and death.
The Bundren family is extremely underprivileged in all aspects of living. Tough times have fallen upon them and they survive on a meager income and they scrape together odd end jobs. Jewel and Darl are going to miss their mother's death for three dollars to transport lumber. The family lives in an everlasting state of need, always short of cash. Darl most likely views the family situation as being more fate then a matter of luck and Jewel more as bad luck. Darl’s passages possess intense imagery and metaphor that suggest his more accepting view of his mother’s death and the wagons broken wheel. Jewel, on the other hand, most likely accepts the job of transporting lumber more willingly then Darl because he knows that one must make there own luck and in this case there own money. Darl believes the families poverty is more predisposed to them rather then subject to change by going out of their way. Another example of Darl’s perspective of fate is when he burns down the barn to try and end the family’s struggle to try and bring their mother to her burial site. He accepts his mother’s death as a part of life and wishes to be done with the unnecessary hardship. Darl saves the coffin from floating down stream when they are on their journey to Jefferson and he saves her from the burning barn, other attributes Faulkner adds to give Jewel a stronger sense of luck over fate. He could have known that fate caused is mothers coffin to almost float away.
On the matter of honor and dishonor the two think fairly similar. They both take their family duty seriously and strive to hold the family together. Darl is the only character that knows that the minister conceived Jewel, and he manages to withhold this from the other in order to not divide the family, especially at such tribulating times. They also both hold honor in different things. Jewel had a deep love of horses and when Anse sells his horse to buy mules he is deeply sadden and angry about the loss of his cherished horse. When Darl is swept away to the asylum he as completely lost his mind, almost out of convenience to appease the family. Thought the novel he was the isolated brother who was more intelligent, and with mother buried and the journey almost complete they find little need for his presence. He served his family with honor and was attempting to distinguish of the corpse to remove her burden from the family.
It is most obvious that Darl has an acceptance for death that none of the other have the intelligence to understand. He repeatedly asks Jewel if he realizes that Addie is going to die and he is unable to grasp it. The journey is tough on the family and Darl truly sees no point in transporting the body to a gravesite where Addie’s family is buried when the odor the body is giving off is so unbearable. To the other characters he almost seems insane because he is so accepting of death. Jewel especially seems ignorant to the idea of his mother’s death even after she has passed away.
Collectively the characters of “As I Lay Dying” provide a complete account of Faulkner’s story. Jewel and Darl especially allow Faulkner to look at opposite extremes of the events the novel includes. Although the two often clash in their actions, they ultimately form a team to give the novel its abstract feel.
