Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1983

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Rice, Julian

Abstract

In the reading of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, the reader's preconceived ideas about sanity and insanity change through identification with each character. Both novels are told from multiple points of view. The reader's transition from one section of the novel into the next reflects crossing a threshold beyond which definitions of sanity must be reformulated. This creative process, mimetic of the writer-text relationship, leads to acceptance of all states of consciousness, which are represented by sections of the novel, as part of the whole. Insanity becomes the fragmen t ation between each section, or state of consciousness, and the whole. This fragmentation appears in characters as hate, despair, and rage. Sanity emerges as wholeness and integration, represented in the novel and actualized in the reader as acceptance and love.

Extent

75 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1983.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT14158

Format

pdf

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