Senior Project Presentation

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Senior Project Presentation

• As I Lay Dying
• and Cubism
• Themes and Motifs
• by Michael Stultz

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Thesis

• No man is himself, he is the sum of his past.
  There is no such thing really as was because the
  past is. It is a part of every man, every woman,
  and every moment. All of his and her ancestry,
  background, is all a part of himself and herself
  at any moment.

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William Faulkner (1897-1962)

• Greatest American Southern writer, won the Nobel
  Prize for Literature, 1950
• A master of modernist experimentation in the
  novel, related to his obsession with time
• stream of consciousness, temporal shifts, and
  multiple voices
• Some major novels The Sound and the Fury (1929)
  4 narrators, As I Lay Dying (1930) 15
  narrators, Absalom! Absalom! (1936)

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William Faulkner (1897-1962)

• Born William Falkner, 25 Sept. 1897, New Albany,
  Mississippi
• 1918 joins Canadian Royal Air Force
• 1919-20 U of Mississippi
• 1921 U of Mississippi Post Office

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Faulkner Major Phase

• 1929 The Sound and the Fury
• 4 narrators
• 1930 As I Lay Dying
• 15 narrators

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William Faulkner (1897-1962)

• His great theme is the influence of the past on
  the present
• Gavin Stevens in Requiem for a Nun (1951), says
• The past is never dead. Its not even past.

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Faulkners Rowan Oak, Oxford, Miss.
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As I Lay Dying

• By William Faulkner
• 1930

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Faulkners House (1930)
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Faulkners Mississippi
2,400 square miles the population, 6,298 whites
and 9,313 Negroes, for a total of 15,611
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What is the American South?

• You're in the American South now, a proud region
  with a distinctive history and culture. A place
  that echoes with names like Thomas Jefferson and
  Robert E. Lee, Scarlett O'Hara and Uncle Remus,
  Martin Luther King and William Faulkner, Billy
  Graham, Mahalia Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Elvis
  Presley. Home of the country blues and country
  music, bluegrass and Dixieland jazz, gospel music
  and rock and roll. Where menus offer both
  down-home biscuits and gravy and uptown shrimp
  and grits. Where churches preach against
  "cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women" (all
  Southern products) and where American football is
  a religion.
• - From John Shelton Reed's My Tears Spoiled My
  Aim

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Modern Similarities

• As I Lay Dying is like
• the TV show Desperate
• Housewives told in
• voice-over by a woman
• who is already dead.
• Faulkners characters
• share inner thoughts
• through voiceovers.

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Modern Similarities

• As I Lay Dying is like
• the movie Pulp Fiction
• told from multiple viewpoints
• and in a non-linear plot.
• Example Vincent Vega gets
• shot and killed, but then hes
• in the last scene (which
• begins the movie).

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Major Motifs

• Earth Addies destination
• Water (flood) river crossing
• Fire barn-burning
• Air the smell of Addies
• rotting corpse

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Major Themes a. History and race b.
Deterioration (of the family, the South, words)
c. Conflicts between generations, classes, races,
man and environment d. Horror,
violence and the abnormal Features of his works
a. complex plot b. stream of consciousness c.
characterization the psychology of characters
d. violation of chronology e. courtroom
rhetoric formal language f. multiple point of
view, circular form
continue
exit
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The Mind vs. The Body

• Critic Edmond Volpe says of Faulkners work
• Faulkner dramatizes the recognition that the
  human body must exist in chronological time, the
  mind does not funtions within the boundries
  placed on the human body. The mind fuses past,
  present, and future. Because we think beyond
  clock measured time and because what we do today
  is shaped by what happened yesterday, Yesterday,
  today, and tomorrow are IS Indivisible. One.

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 Innner Narrators   Anse Bundren patriarch of
the Bundren family Addie Anses dying (then
dead) wife Cash (30) the eldest son, the best
carpenter in the area Darl (28) the second son,
sensitive, cruel and intuitive Jewel (18) the
third son, favoring actions over words Dewey Dell
(17) the only Bundren daughter Vardaman (9) the
youngest Bundren
exit
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 Outer Narrators  Whitfield the local
preacher Vernon Tull Bundrens neighbor Cora
Tull Vernons wife, nosy and pious Lucius
Peabody the local doctor Samson another
neighbor who puts the Bundrens up for a night on
their journey Henry Armstid another neighbor who
hosts the Bundrens one unfortunate night Moseley
druggist in Mottson, a town the Bundrens pass
through MacGowan a drugstore clerk in Jefferson
exit
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Faulkners Process

• 59 interior monologues where life and death are
  revealed through the characters
• Our memory, the way we understand, is related to
  our physical perception
• Monologues are very sensual perceptions of the
  real world
• These intensify the characters mental
  emotional experiences for the reader

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More Faulkners Process

• Interior monologues
• Stream of consciousness
• First person narrator makes action immediate
• No omniscient narrator so no center
• 59 chapters apportioned among 15 characters
• 7 are concerned
• 8 are detached

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cubism

• After 1909, Picasso and Braque began a more
  systematic study of structure which we know as
  "Analytical Cubism". In this period, they removed
  bright colors from their compositions, favoring
  monochromatic earth tones so that they could
  focus primarily on the structure. The paintings
  of this period look as if they have deconstructed
  objects and rearranged them on the canvas. One
  goal of this is to depict different viewpoints
  simultaneously. Traditionally, an object is
  always viewed from one specific viewpoint and at
  one specific (stopped) moment in time. Picasso
  and Braque felt that this was too limiting, and
  desired to represent an object as if they are
  viewing it from several angles or at different
  moments in time. Innovative as this was, the
  danger was that many of the works of this period
  are completely incomprehensible to the viewer, as
  they start to lose all sense of
  form.Eyeconart.com

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Pablo Picasso, 1900
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Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1900
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Gris, Portrait of Picasso (1912)
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Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1907
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Picasso Cubed
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Cubism ExampleFull-Face Portrait Student work
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Materials

• Mirrors
• 12x 18 newsprint
• Construction paper, scrap paper newspapers,
  wallpaper and other papers.
• Pencils, scissors, Seral transfer paper,
  glue, black permanent markers, paint markers 
• Poster board for frame

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The Mirror Effect

• Most people look in
• a mirror this way
• Full-front,
• Head-on

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We see what we want to see
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We rarely
Look at the sides. .and never behind.
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so we never really know how others see us.
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Creative Component
The pencil drawing on the right was made in the
author'sadult drawing class.  It is a practice
observation drawingof two chickens in motion
drawn with the instructions to keepdrawing in
the same space while the chickens are moving.
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