earticle

영어

This research aims to closely read and analyze William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying critically and deconstructively utilizing ideas from Georg Hegel’s one of the most controversial and influential philosophical masterpieces, Phenomenology of Spirit. As I Lay Dying describes the Bundrens’ absurd odyssey to bury their mother’s corpse, which turns out to be a mosaic of comic, cosmic, and cacophonic narrative narrated by four brothers, a sister, father, and dead mother who also narrates her esoteric and existential story that deconstructs Western idea of family and ethics setting up Hegel’s ‘ethical community.’ This research is divided into two sections: Hegelian interpretation of characters’ inter-conflict and their struggle to recognition; analysis of the family in the novel through deconstructive reading of Hegelian ethical community in the novel. Then I will present how Hegelian negativity and dialectics work and implode within the novel to prove that the Bundren’s Odessey is not a heroic but absurd drama depicting the collapse of Hegelian idea of ethical community.