Darl (16-20)

Darl (16-20)
“A feather dropped near the front door will rise and brush along the ceiling, slanting backward, until it reaches the down-turning current at the back door: so with voices.”
In the novel, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, Darl describes a brief scene of a feather that he unintentionally takes notice of. The imagery Faulkner uses to describe the exhibit benefits the character development of Darl because he notices something so insignificant which most people would not even see. The “downward-turning motion” indicated in the statement is a common motion seen in everyday life, not many people, however, will notice an event like this. Darl can therefore be characterized as a person who observes more detail than others, which can foreshadow an important role for Darl and his perception of the world around him.
An incredibly important aspect of the sentence is the syntax used including the colon and the proceeding contribution. The addition of the colon into the sentence breaks up the line into two different thoughts. One thought is the obvious imagery of the feather while the other idea is of a much more interesting literary device. The seemingly incomplete “so with voices” implies that the wind, carrying the feather, also carried the voices from a conversation in another part of the room. The literary device used to describe the winds actions is known as personification which further adds to the sentence and chapter as a whole. The syntax of this additional inspection of the scene helps the sentence demonstrate Darl’s observational process which further aids the reader understand both the scene and character.
The various literary and syntactical devices used in this sentence help the reader comprehend and foreshadow events involving Darl. This observation indicates that Darl is a person who takes notice to the smaller things and who can appreciate the elements. The sentence in question will eventually contribute to the novel as a whole through its quantity of important literary and rhetorical devices.



Darl;
ob-ser-va-tion-al Spelled Pronunciation [ob-zur-vey-shuh-nl]
–adjective
Of, pertaining to, or founded on observation, esp. founded on observation rather than experiment.