As I Lay not Being a Hero's Journey

Hey guys! Welcome back for the fourth blog post for this semester! Today I am going to be talking about whether "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner can truthfully be considered a Hero's Journey narrative, and if so, how. This book is so complicated because it is narrated from the perspective of many different people throughout the book (multiple narrative). This means that the story never actually follows the path of any one person completely, making a Hero's Journey more difficult.

The first thing that you have to do is determine what truly makes a novel a Hero's Journey and why. I would argue that the story has to truly follow the perspective of the character who is completing the journey and have that as the main focus and plot of the book. This is essential because otherwise, the development of the hero is more of a background or side plot, not necessarily related to the main focus of the book, which is not the point of the Hero's Journey. The Hero's Journey as a literary device is used as a type of story in which the whole novel is focused on the main character's/protagonist's decisions and challenges that lead them ultimately to a better place. 

However, in "As I Lay Dying", there is no focus on any particular character because the perspective keeps switching around between different people. This is not to say that the perspective cannot change, you could very easily still have the new narrator also focused on the protagonist, but this does not happen in this novel. The book constantly switches around between all the characters giving you a perfect depiction of the lack of heroism among them.

In addition, none of the main characters ever become better people or get to a better place in life. They all stay almost exactly the same throughout the novel, with no development. When they finally reach their goal they have had the whole book, it is barely even mentioned. In fact, most of the characters have other goals in mind throughout the whole journey that are not burying Addie. In general, none of the characters have any heroic traits and there is no identifiable protagonist, making it hard for it to be a Hero's Journey.

From the very beginning of the book, this multiple narrative style makes it difficult to even find a main character/protagonist who would complete a Hero's Journey. As the book goes on, there is a lack of a main character, because no one is truly the most central person to the story and they don't demonstrate any heroic traits that you would see from a Hero in a Hero's Journey.