As I lay Dying - The Anomaly of Moseley

The single chapter in As I Lay Dying where Moseley becomes the narrative focalizer, is anomalous because the focalizer is a character that had not yet been mentioned, and is never mentioned again. The general pattern in the novel is that each focalizer is either a recurring character, or is mentioned for the first time in the last sentences of one chapter, and then becomes the narrative focalizer in the next. In the last sentence …

…course, as the chapter goes on, it becomes clear who the "he" was, and who the "it" was, and why this unknown woman named Cora "saved out the eggs and baked yesterday" (6). It was a choice to deprive us of that information early in the chapter<a choice that logically follows from the intense subjectivity of the narrators<but a choice that consciously throws the reader into confusion that could be easily resolved.