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Essay / Particularities of Moseley in "As I Lay Dying"
The only chapter of As I Lay Dying where Moseley becomes the narrative focalizer, is abnormal because the focalizer is a character who had not yet been mentioned and is not never mentioned again. . The general pattern of the novel is that each focalizer is either a recurring character or is first mentioned in the final sentences of one chapter and then becomes the narrative focalizer in the next. In the last sentence of one of Darl's early chapters, Darl says that "when Peabody comes, they'll have to use the rope" (40). The reader has not yet heard Peabody's name, and as if to answer the question of Peabody's identity, in the next chapter Peabody is the focalizer (41-46). It’s like we’re introduced to someone at a party and then allowed to have a conversation with them. It is important to introduce them in the previous chapter to give the reader some understanding of the character's place. The phrase "when Peabody arrives..." certainly doesn't give us much information, but at least we know it's someone the family knows and is coming to help them. Similarly, Darl, Dewey Dell, and Jewel are all introduced in the novel. Moseley, on the other hand, is like an individual who walks up to you at a party and just starts talking. There is no way for the reader, when reading this chapter for the first time, to place this woman within the larger framework of the story, and, more importantly, no way to place the short narrative of the chapter within the larger framework of the story. . We see a young girl who went to a pharmacy to get an abortion, but so far none of the focusers have been to a town. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay As the chapter continues, we realize that this scene, which was so confusing in the middle of it, is actually incredibly illuminating for one of the book's biggest themes. We see that it is Dewey Dell who needs an abortion, and that his child is the product of incest. In the midst of the micro-narrative, this chapter seems totally confusing. The reader is not able to place any of the elements of the chapter within the framework that he has developed through his previous experience in the novel. But in the macro-narrative, this story is more obvious than most of the other information we receive in the novel. Although this chapter presents an anomaly at the micro level (the level of immediate experience when reading the book) by giving the reader an unintroduced focus, in the larger structure of the book (since one is able to looking back at previous events), it is representative of a recurring pattern: confusion is caused at the micro level and resolved at the macro level. The most obvious indication of this trend is that the first word in many chapters is a pronoun without an antecedent. “He” or “it” is the first word in almost half of the chapters. And when a mysterious word doesn't open a chapter, an equally mysterious phrase does. These first sentences are always a shock, after the minimal comfort the reader may have begun to feel with the focus of the previous chapter. Once again we are plunged into a darkness from which we must emerge. But, of course, as the chapter progresses, it becomes clear who was the "he", and who was the "it", and why this stranger named Cora "saved the eggs and cooked them yesterday" (6). It was a choice to deprive us of this information at the beginning of the chapter - a choice that follows logically from the intense subjectivity of the narrators - but a choice that consciously throws..