Poor, Crazy, Darl

          Darl is one of the few characters in As I Lay Dying that we the students seemed to actually like.  For a long time, many of us considered him the "hero" of the story, and disdained the rest of his family (well, okay, mostly just Anse).  He was in many spots the closest thing we had to a true, omniscient narrator, in that he gave us a lot of backstory on scenes and events he couldn't possibly be privy to.  His mysteriousness as well as his clarity to us, the readers, made him an easy character to like.
          But now, we get to the end of the novel.  As it turns out, pretty much everyone lost a lot to get here.  Addie's dead, one of Cash's legs is ruined, Jewel lost his horse and some skin on his back, Dewey Dell is still pregnant and now has no way to stop being pregnant, and Vardaman didn't get his train.  Oh, and Darl is in either a prison or an insane asylum.
          It seems like the only person to come out on top is Anse.  He got one wife in the ground, a new one in his house, and a new set of chompers for his mouth.  He kind of screwed over the entire rest of his family to get there, but he did get there.
          And perhaps the person who was most screwed over by all this is, indeed, Darl.  Whether he is in prison for arson or an asylum for being insane (or both) I think he's in for a pretty miserable life.  His family seemed to think that this might be the best for him, but if I'm correct about criminal justice/mental healthcare during this time period, things are not looking good for Darl.
          But Darl being demonstrably insane brings an interesting facet into our, the readers, view.  If Darl is crazy, can we trust anything that he has narrated?  A lot (maybe even all) of what he's narrated has been via his seeming omniscience, and the possibility must be considered that all of that was merely hallucinations.  Much what he relayed to us did seem to be corroborated by other characters' accounts, but for the rest we just assumed it was accurate.  Then again, perhaps Darl is deemed crazy because of his all-seeing-ness.  Maybe everything he "saw" and narrated was accurate, and maybe he saw a little too much.
         When you look back at much of Darl's dialogue, it is a little creepy, maybe even sinister.  When he discusses whether he is, or he are, or if he was is then he cannot be was with Vardaman, he certainly seems crazy.  But then when he talks, again to Vardaman, about "hearing" Addie through the coffin, and the whole deal with her "facing" a certain way, that is a little more unnerving.  That, coupled with his laughter, do make him seem extremely crazy once you set aside reader biases.
         Darl is one creepy dude, but whether he'll be better off in the pokey rather than with his family I cannot say.  The story ends, and therefore so does Darl's existence - kind of.  He's still there, in our minds, as we wonder what will happen to this psychic, this channeller of the dead, this weird, creepy dude that we once thought could be the hero of this story.