Analyze The Ways Faulkner's Use Of Language

The complexity of this passage narrated by Vardaman lies in Faulkner’s employment of a stream of consciousness writing style. Vardaman describes an array of images using the language and understanding of a child, written in the present tense with no punctuation and using a highly repetitive sentence structure. At first glance, Faulkner’s stream of consciousness evokes a sense of randomness to the passage. However, Faulkner’s narrative in highly stylised and structure of the passage serves to increase and emphasise the chaos of Vardaman’s mental state and the Bundren’s struggle.
Faulkner uses Vardaman to narrate this scene in the present tense. The use of present tense is typical in stream of consciousness writing but this style coupled with a child narrator results in a passage that can be difficult to follow at times. This is due to how Vardaman witnesses the scene first hand. His recollection is scattered and confused, ‘Darl jumped going under he went under and Cash hollering to catch her and I …show more content…
The entire passage is one long sentence with no full stops. Only connectives such as ‘and’, ‘and then’, ‘and so’ are used as Vardaman shifts his focus from each aspect of the action. Vardaman repeats words and whole phrases constantly throughout this passage. This repetition of ‘hollering’, ‘catch her’, ‘catch her Darl catch her’, ‘it was all right now it was all right now it was all right’ suggests that Vardaman is limited in his abilities to narrate the action unfolding before him. Vardaman’s narrative is a literal, piece by piece account of what is happening with no deviation from the action. The repetition of ‘hollering’ and ‘catch her Darl catch her’ mean we can constantly hear Vardaman’s unrelenting shouts to Darl. There is an urgency and panic in this repetition, in this state of trauma and emergency it seems there is only one thing Vardaman can shout as he runs down the bank of the

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