Analysis Of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Faulkner’s Description of Dewey Dell in As I Lay Dying William Faulkner’s phrasing, point of view, and grammar in his polyphonic novel, As I Lay Dying, strategically employs the miserably pessimistic yet juvenile voice of Dewey Dell to characterize her as the novel’s naïve victim. The only surviving female in the Bundren family, Faulkner presents the hardships that Dewey Dell must endure. In addition, as an uneducated girl with no guidance, Dewey Dell experiences an uncertainty in many issues that arise in her life.

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.

This piece is a simpler one based off of the concept that words are unfulfilling to the concepts they represent. In As I Lay Dying, Addie states that words are “just words.” Addie developed a disdain for words as she slowly got more cruel the longer she remained trapped in this family. In a certain passage from As I Lay Dying, Tull and some locals are talking with Cash about Cash’s broken leg. Faulkner gives us two different conversation one is boring and mundane and is the one that was actually spoken, while the other is rich in content and opinion, a much more interesting conversation to have, but is only the thoughts of the men. The words spoken were not the true thoughts of the men and the men hold back their thoughts because they are very

As I Lay Dying, a novel written by William Faulkner, describes the journey that the Bundren family makes to bury their mother. Along the trip Mrs. Bundren passes away and leaves behind her 5 kids and husband. The kids all have their own serious issues, and their father, Anse, is too self absorbed to care. The children transport their mother, and the hatred they have towards one another builds up and becomes exposed. Throughout the novel, Faulkner asserts that families need an understanding of love in order to form successful relationships and meaningful bonds.

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

Despite the fact that human beings are oftentimes reluctant to admit it, it is a fact of life that one of the most fundamental aspects of human nature is self-interest. Selfishness pervades everyday life, no matter what efforts are made to deny and rationalize its existence. In the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, the unique method handling the death of Addie that each character uses exemplifies the inherent selfishness apparent in human nature and outlines the various emotions that accompany the death of a loved one.

In William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, the reader is encouraged to sympathize with Dewey Dell on account of her quickly waning life. We are given multiple circumstances in the book where Dewey Dell’s life is noticeably described in a negative way, not as a person, but rather how bad of a situation she is in. She is an impregnated seventeen-year-old girl who is unable to find proper treatment to relieve her of a child she doesn’t want. While she is dealing with her own catastrophic incident she is also dealing with the numerous other problems her family is unsuccessfully dealing with. Due to the rest of the Bundren family’s understandably more serious dilemmas taking priority over Dewey Dell’s, she is forced to put off her own extremely urgent predicament.

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.

There are many symbols in As I Lay Dying. William Faulkner is known for symbols in his novels. The character’s names in this novel even have a meaning. Although they are hard to decipher, once the symbol is revealed, it makes the novel much more interesting.

In William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying, nature is portrayed as the supreme destroyer as shown through its elements of water and fire.

Death is recognized and handled differently by many cultures. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying puts insight into how one family in the middle of the Great Depression deals with their mother’s death. Addie’s death characterizes Darl and Cash, illuminating Cash’s need for order and Darl’s hungry curiosity and deep thought. These two men show how grief can affect people differently.

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.

In “As I Lay Dying”, by William Faulkner, he incorporates the use of Biblical allusions and other works of literature along the lines of “The Odyssey”. Faulkner’s association with the two novels is that he wants to present the important take on the idea of Man’s spiritual journey. In this case, in “As I lay Dying” it would be the journey that the Bundrens take to get Addie to New Hope, and in “The Odyssey”, Odysseus’s journey is traveling back home from the Trojan war. Faulkner chooses to relate The Odyssey and As I Lay dying, because they both incorporate Biblical references.

William Faulkner’s piece of literature “As I Lay Dying” is a tale of a western-type of family living in what is described as “a cotton house of rough logs” and “a broken roof set at a single pitch.” Soon after the setting is described, Faulkner introduces the reader to the main character and 15-year-old Jewel, what caught my attention while reading is no information is given to us about the narrator (gender, age, etc.). Moving on from the introductions, the author’s excessive use of imagery puts the reader in the place of the character, such as “Sawing and knocking, and keeping the air always moving so fast on her face that when you’re tired you can’t breathe it.”

Addie Bundren in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying Woman is the source and sustainer of virtue and also a prime source of evil. She can be either; because she is, as man is not, always a little beyond good and evil. With her powerful natural drive and her instinct for the concrete and personal, she does not need to agonize over her decisions. There is no code for her to master, no initiation for her to undergo.