Character Analysis
The novel's most eloquent voice and its most tragic figure. Darl narrates 19 of 59 chapters — more than any other character — and does so with a clarity that extends beyond his physical presence. He may be psychic, or he may be imagining with preternatural accuracy; Faulkner refuses to adjudicate. His intelligence is extraordinary and unrecognized; his sensitivity to others' suffering is total and useless. He burns the barn to end the absurdity and is committed to an asylum for it. By the end, he refers to himself in the third person — his identity has split from his consciousness. He is the novel's conscience made literal, and the novel's central cruelty is that such a conscience destroys itself.
Literary, abstract, philosophically sophisticated — vocabulary exceeds his biography and his education