Faulkner would have us understand beauty through relations. The relation of one thing to another, and what better way to show that than through the various narratives. How could we understand beauty though unless we also understood what is ugly. Addie is the most blatant pusher of ideals and he has her killed off, supporting the idea that beauty cannot be forced upon anyone. Faulkner wants us to experience beauty through decadence. He wants us to be disoriented and amazed at the same time. He moves quickly, then slowly, then quickly, changing narrators like worn clothes, never settling. He creates a beautiful work that is as tightly formed from a character’s object to their performance. And yet that performance brings each character nothing but pain and destruction. There is no saving grace!
For my final emblem, the cover piece for the story, I chose to incorporate all of the images rather than creating a new image that could juggle all of the hefty meaning behind the individual pieces. The final emblem refers back to the encyclopedic process of reading As I Lay Dying. The depth of the novel and the structural integrity has been replaced by the coffin flame pattern. This is to denote the rigid beauty of the design of the novel. The world of the novel still dwells within Faulkner’s precisely built novel, but now the precision can be seen within the context of the work. Instead of having ‘holy bible’ as the name of the encyclopedia, I changed the text to the title of the work and the author.
The worlds are no longer empty and now contain both the spiral droplet to represent the multiple narrations ability to control pace. The Drill Braid also emerges from the reading representing the conflict and resolution of images within the novel. Standing slightly off to the side stands Anse with his empty cross, staring at the work from outside the work. Anse looks comical next to the heaviness of the book, and accurately describes the feeling of release whenever Faulkner alleviates the heaviness of the book. He stands outside of the book just as a theme exists outside of the book.
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