Analysis Of William Faulkner 's ' I Lay Dying '

Most works of literature often use events and objects to display a deeper meaning to the current situation. In As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, there are many references that connect the Bundren family to mythological, Biblical, and classical allusions. Faulkner’s use of various types of allusions emphasizes the characters’ behavior and relationship to each other.

Born in New Albany, Mississippi on Sept. 25th, 1897, Faulkner is one of America’s most celebrated novelist, poet, and short story writer. In contrast to the minimalistic style of his contemporaries, Faulkner often employed “stream of consciousness” into his work and wrote highly emotional, complex, and almost grotesque stories. As I Lay Dying, however, was one of Faulkner’s extreme pieces of literature. Through presenting the stories in the voices of fifteen unique characters, Faulkner was able to offer readers each character’s inner thoughts and emotions. While Darl, for instance, narrates in a storytelling fashion using reminiscences of his past and internal monologues. Dewey Dell, on the other hand, narrates with frantic energy and random thoughts. As we are not simply passive readers of each narrator, he brings up an interesting question: Whose narrative should we trust and whose should we not? Each individual character constitutes only a single part of the big picture, so it is up to readers to decide the credibility of each accounts. However, Faulkner does turn the reader's attention to one character in particular: Darl Bunsen. By contrasting Darl’s omniscience to his supposed insanity,

Exploring the Layers of Maternity and Southern Womanhood in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying

His family wasfinancially stable, but his father, Murry, was an alcoholic. Their family dinners were done silentand Murry unexpectedly left town for a couple of days and then came back. Faulkner’s mother,Maud, was an independent, hardheaded woman. Murry and Maud fought really often. WilliamFaulkner’s books explore family dynamics, race, gender, and social class. Faulkner was somewhat misfit. It is said that he used to invent stories about himself. (“As I Lay Dying Analysis”).As I Lay Dying was a required to read in Pulaski County High School, a high school inSomerset, Kentucky as a reading assignment in an advanced English class. The book waschallenged because the book contains profanity and a part about masturbation. School boardmembers were concerned for the book’s language and dialect. Central High School in Loisville,Kentucky decided to ban the book for profanity and confusion on the existence of God (“Bannedand/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20thCentury”). Some of the bans were quickly reversed, but some remained banned (Baldassarro,“As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner”). “Then I would wait until they all went to sleep so I could lie with my shirt-tail up,hearing them asleep, feeling myself without touching myself, feeling the cool silence blowingupon my parts and wondering if Cash was yonder in the darkness doing it too, had been doing itperhaps for

The author of As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, really contributes to the aspects of literature through his ability to tell a seemingly incredible story through only the “stream-of-consciousness” technique. Faulkner takes his insight beyond the piece, through other’s views and thoughts. Although the characters might be acting differently upon each subject or handling each action in opposite ways, the tone and theme that he uses really brings the whole piece to a perfect balance. In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner displays contradicting elements through the reactions of the family members towards the mother’s death with the use of dialogue, tone, imagery, and internal conflict.

The book, As I Lay Dying, written by William Faulkner, tells a story of how a mother named Addie died and now the children of the family are coping with the loss of their mother and then setting off to a journey for her burial located in Jefferson. Throughout the story, each character has their way of coping with loss and by doing so, reveals more and more about themselves. Thus, there are many elements in the story that express unconscious desires or inner feelings of characters that show the psychoanalytic viewpoint in the story.

In his novel As I lay Dying Faulkner explores the connections between a family with a history of violence and mistrust while they attempt to fulfill the final wish of their matriarch. Throughout the story the family gradually become macabre caricatures of their former selves and attempt to improve their meager positions in society by fighting one another at every opportunity. As the journey unfolds the audience is given insight into the past of the female characters Cora Tull, Addie, and Dewey Dell who are uniquely portrayed as both victims and the perpetrators of violence in this already highly dysfunctional family unit. This archetypal characterization reinforces the themes that persist throughout the novel, and demonstrates

William Faulkner released his famous book, As I Lay Dying, in 1930 (Eldridge x). The thirties were a hard time for everyone involved; citizen, soldiers, government workers no one was excluded from the hardships of this excruciating time in America. The reason Americans were suffering so much was due to very recently coming out of the First World War, and then shortly after, falling into a nationwide state of economic depression. In 1932 employment rates were only “sixty percent of what they once were in 1929” (Eldridge xxi). Not only was the depression looming over American citizens, but many were still recovering from the effects WWI had on the world. World War I ended in 1919, which seemed to lead to prosperity in the United States of America,

In the novel As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner introduces the Bundren family, consisting of Anse Bundren and his children Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman, as they embark on a quest to bury their late mother, Addie Bundren, in the nearby town of Jefferson. Although some may see this novel as being optimistic, it can be seen through the fates of the characters that it actually has a pessimistic outlook.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a novel about siblings and their dying mother, Addie. Not only that but also their each individually outlook on that death and death in general. The ability to perceive the situation differently is what is important about this novel by Faulkner. He created a different point of view from all the siblings and close neighbors as well, to create that different outlook on what they feel about the situation at hand. It is important to realize that each individual point of view indicates how they are shaped by the death of Addie, personality and situational wise.

William Faulkner’s, As I Lay Dying, is a story of the Bundren family making their way to Jefferson to bury Addie Bundren. Along the way they come across many problems that delay their journey. Fifteen different characters narrate providing different viewpoints of the events that occur. Cash’s communication evolves from action to language when he becomes unable to act.

His actually education only goes as far as one year at the University of Mississippi. After leaving Oxford and living in New Haven, Connecticut for a few years, Faulkner joined the British Royal Flying Corps. He never served active duty, as the war ended before his training did. Faulkner returned home and began writing poetry. But his early writing was more of the traditional style- a mix of Shakespeare, Victorian, and Edwardian. It wasn’t until a trip to New Orleans in 1925 that he began to fiddle with his writing style, after a friend encouraged him to write more Southern based prose. His style also grew as he began reading James Joyce, a “high” modernist writer, and Sigmund Freud, and also took a trip to Europe- the center of modernist writing. With these influences, Faulkner began writing novels about Southern society, with an emphasis on the psychology of the characters. For example, in his novel The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner writes from four different points of view; the first three sections are of each of the three brother’s point of view, and the last section is omniscient. His writing also plays with chronology, not always following a specific timeline. The disjointedness of time is very prominent in As I Lay Dying. About the death of a mother, the 59 inner monologues and fifteen characters make the book more about the characters psychology rather than a

William Cuthbert Faulkner (changed from the original spelling Falkner) was an American novelist. He usually wrote his novels, books, and poems in a mighty ways. This was one of the reason why only readers who pay strict attention to details can understand his writing’s main idea. Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in 1897. He came from a wealth family. His family lost all its financial power like other southerners did during the Civil War. Most of Faulkner’s early works were poetry, but he became famous for his novels set in the American South. He is best known for his novels such as The Sound And The Fury and As I Lay Dying. The novel As I Lay Dying is one of his novels written in a challenging way. Faulkner did not go back to his novel As I Lay Dying and change a word after he finished writing it.

While As I Lay Dying has earned its keep as a literary masterpiece, I find its ideology questionable. The literary aspects are to be applauded, with the exception of a few disjointed details. Your portrayal of religion and family, on the other hand, leave me with many thoughts.

On the back of my edition of As I Lay Dying there is a quote from William Faulkner on the subject of his novel. The quote says: I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I even put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall. The end result is a work of precision and care. Each word has been carefully chosen and carefully ordered to create his “tour-de-force”. This can be both a comfort and a frustration to a reader. On the one hand, a reader has a good deal more motivation to go looking for answers if they know that there is indeed an answer to be found. A reader can trust that Faulkner knows what he’s doing. On the other however, Faulkner’s deliberation means that not one word can be left unstudied nor one phrase unparsed if a reader wishes to fully grasp Faulkner’s intentions. At present, I do not believe myself to be fully capable of deciphering all of the novel’s layers, but I will make an attempt to understand a particular phrasing which I believe to be rather significant, that is, the title.