Your typical backwoods family: Anse, hardworking, toothless, faithful, semi-useless; Addie, his wife, very hardworking, resentful, cheated on her husband, dead at an early age; Cash, their oldest son, focused, determined, honest; son Darl, intelligent, watchful, non-risk-taking, strange, arsonist; son Jewel (son of Addie and NOT Anse), wooden-eyed, angry, loner, fiercely loyal; daughter Dewey Dell, dopey, pregnant, loving; youngest son Vardaman, just a kid trying to hold it all together.
Faulkner’s technique in using the multiple point of view and stream of conciousness form provides the reader with a more intimate relationship with the characters, and the involvement requires closer reading to develop insight and decision as to their credibility. We find ourselves believing one, then may after hearing from others, change our minds.
Conflicts: Death, unwed pregnancy, adultery, arson, floods, stinky coffin, nutty son, broken wagons, manipulations, selfishness, abortion, surprise wedding.
Faulkner certainly puts a lot of action and misery within one family situation. Narrative structure is reinforced by different points of view but remains linear with inclusion of some backstory woven within. Information is fed to the reader in bits gleaned from a myriad number of characters, mainly family and neighbors, so that the story is built in layers of clues that parallel unseen until they connect and move forward. I visualize the DNA graphics we see in twisting strands of different colored pearls.
Only Faulkner knows how to create literary life using these pearls.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology