"Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a
right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint
none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us
talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's
the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it."
-William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, p. 223
These lines, spoken by
Faulkner’s character, Cash, are among my very favorite passages of
literature. I first read them in high
school English and I have not forgotten them since.
Cash is a young adult
journeying with his dysfunctional family to bury the mother in her home
town. Throughout the novel, Cash’s
younger brother is portrayed as socially awkward, strange, and eventually
determined insane. In the novel’s final
page, the brother is taken away to an asylum.
Faulkner uses the novel to
address a number of issues, including insanity. This he examines in an ironic
manner. While the family sees the
younger brother as insane, the reader finds the entire family to be odd. One even sympathizes with the brother,
recognizing the family’s sad circumstances and their inept behavior as the cause
of his odd response.
Cash seems to be the most
mentally sound character within the novel. Toward its end, he utters the words mentioned
above. Through this passage, Faulkner
caused me to ask profound questions for which I still don’t have complete
answers. What is sanity? What is insanity? How do we determine who is insane? Who is to say when someone is insane?
I have since come to
believe that there is no such thing as a perfectly healthy mind. No one can truly judge whether one mind is
healthier than another. The two are
merely different.
This perspective I gained
through Faulkner’s literature helped me with a very personal situation in
life. My younger brother has Asperger’s. Though I’ve never believed he was “insane,” I
found my brother odd. For much of our
lives, I was very insensitive toward him.
He had likes and dislikes that were not typical of other boys his
age. I made fun of him for the things he
did.
As I have grown, my
perspective has changed. Faulkner’s
words, combined with other life experiences, have caused me to think that
perhaps my brother is “normal” and I’m the “strange” one. Maybe there is no such thing as “normal” and
we’re all simply different. Either way,
my new perspective has brought me to seek my brother’s forgiveness and support
his interests. Though he thinks and
behaves differently than I do, I love him and am proud of his
accomplishments.