Post World War II America in Throes of Death: Reading Lie Down in Darkness the Vichian Way

Abstract

William Styron’s debut novelLie Down in Darknessrecounts the disintegration and decline of a formerly wealthy Southern family.The novel written in a complex experiment with flashback, interior monologue, and third person omniscient perspective presents in its very texture the complexity that the post-War generation had to live through. Bleak is the view of human condition and human nature, asit was bound to, given the plight of the war-worn and bomb-torn world in the aftermath of the devastating Second World War.Novel is about the disintegration of a southern family, the Loftises. The immediate setting is the funeral of one ofthe daughters, Peyton, a suicide. But the conflicts between the narcissistic, alcoholic father and the emotionally disturbed mother, the hate between mother and daughter, and the near incestuous love of the father for Peyton—all contributors to the characters' disillusionment and the suicide itself—are unfolded in flashbacks. The novel makes a rewarding reading if read against the schema of Giambattista Vico’s notion of history as divided into three ages: the Age of Gods, of Heroes, and of Men. This novel fits into the schema of the Ages of Men, since, according to Vico, the age of Men is symbolic of death and devastation, lacking in nobility both of ideals and character. In the novel too, it is the images of disintegration, both family and personality, that leads to ultimate death of individuals and society as a whole.