You can compare the mapping features
of Digital Yoknapatawpha with one
of the "visualizations" features listed
at the top of the screen.
Let's try the "Narrative Analysis" feature.
If you select "As I Lay Dying" on the left side of the screen
at the very top you'll see a map of the events that
show us that this is largely a chronological story.
But, given that march forward through the narrative
present of July late in the 1920s,
we'll have to look more closely to see what, precisely,
drags us back to the past, those events that are marked in blue.
We see events like Jewel's acquisition of a horse,
Dewey Dell's relationship with Lafe,
and Addie's memory of the birth of each of her children,
listed here.
Most of these events are used to justify the characters'
present actions to themselves, most often,
rather than to other people.
But those same past events are the pieces
that Darl uses to learn of Jewel's parentage,
as Darl links Dewey Dell's pregnancy to Addie's earlier
pregnancy.
Although each character is stuck in his or her
own self-justifying relationship with the past,
Darl is one of few who can consider other people's
past experiences as a way of understanding the present.
Addie's experience with language makes her skeptical of language
when she interacts with others.
Vardaman's experience being stuck in a crib
gives him a radical sympathy for his mother in the coffin.
But Darl reaches outside his own experience,
using Dewey Dell's relationship with Lafe
to understand his mother's secret affair which,
of course, happened a long time ago,
before our narrative present.
One big question, of course, is what
readers should do with the signs of Darl's own past
that are sprinkled through the story: when he lies awake
in a "strange room" or that event that happens late
in the novel, when "Darl had a spy-glass,"
and we learn that he had been a soldier in World War I. Is he
or is he not reading others' experiences through his own war
experience, or his perception maybe of maternal neglect?
Is he right that he does not draw on his own experience,
and draw that into the work of interpreting
other people in the present?
If we return to the map page, we can see that, yes,
most of the events cluster in this epic journey
from the Bundren home to Jefferson.
But using a standard map like we see here
that reflects the America we may know
shows us also just how small that journey is,
compared to the events that are remembered
in this story, those events that were in blue.
It's forty miles from their home to Jefferson and the cemetery
there.
And over on the right-hand side of the screen
we see additional maps, including a marker for France,
where Darl served in WWI.
Keep in mind that each of these events, each of these points,
does not correspond to, say, the France or the Texas that you
know today.
"Texas," in Faulkner's world, as you'll
see if you click on the note, is used and reserved
in Faulkner's fiction to describe a place where
men run to escape shame or punishment for their crimes.
Similarly, being sent to "Jackson, Mississippi,"
in Faulkner's fiction, is to be sent to the Mississippi State
Insane Asylum.
And we see that if we look across the fictions,
rather than just in As I Lay Dying.
If you search for "Jackson" under the "Search" bar
at the very top, under "Locations,"
we can search all the texts that are in Digital
Yoknapatawpha for "Jackson."
What we see is that each reference to "Jackson"
is to the Mississippi State Insane Asylum:
throughout The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying,
Sanctuary, and so on.
You can see how Faulkner creates a kind of shorthand,
so that "Jackson" means "Insane Asylum,"
"Texas" means "a place for men to escape the repercussions
of their actions."
This helps us to get into the cultural knowledge that
is very specific, very familiar, and very
well-known to his characters, even if not to his readers
until he builds that vocabulary.
If we go back, we can use similar searches up here,
"Keyword" searches under "Events," to examine,
and if we limit this one to As I Lay Dying
it'll be a little bit more apparent,
if we examine how similar themes, for example,
can be seen throughout the text we can begin to see,
down to specific pages and lines of the text how Faulkner links
Dewey Dell's initial concerns about a secret pregnancy, which
we see from the early pages of the text,
to Addie's secret affair, which are referred to later
in the novel.
Here, by drawing out these events
to lay them side by side, we can see
what Darl sees as he links the two women in his life
through secrecy and sexuality.