Characters Giving Monologue William Faulkner’s Novel, As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is a novel by William Faulkner that chronicles the journey of the Bundren family (Anse, Dewey Dell, Darl, Jewel, Cash, and Vardaman) to bury their recently deceased mother, Addie, in Jefferson. Throughout As I Lay Dying, Faulkner treats Darl as the de-facto narrator of the novel, endowing Darl with the most passages in the novel and endowing him with an omniscient perspective of the events chronicled in the book. Jewel, however, gets the opposite treatment from Faulkner; he only is designated one passage in the entire book and is known for being self-centered and close-minded. In terms of the motivation of traveling to Jefferson, Darl has none, while Jewel’s sole purpose is to give Addie a proper burial. By the end of the novel,

In As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner the reader gets to see how hard life is for the Bundren family. The Bundren’s face many obstacles throughout the book and somehow manage to come through most of them okay. The family fulfills their desires along the way to relieve them of these struggles. The main theme in As I Lay Dying is family dysfunction, and this family dysfunction leads to Darl’s insanity.

     William Faulkner is one of America's most talked about writers and his work should be included in any literary canon for several reasons. After reading a few of his short stories, it becomes clear that Faulkner's works have uniqueness to them. One of the qualities that make William Faulkner's writings different is his close connection with the South. Gwendolyn Charbnier states, 'Besides the sociological factors that influence Faulkner's work, biographical factors are of great importance…'; (20). Faulkner's magnificent imagination led him to create a fictional Mississippi county named Yoknapatawpha, which includes every detail from square mileage of the county to the break down of

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your vision is clear, your whole body will be full of light” (). Ever since the creation of mankind, the eyes exist as the window to the soul. Taking one look into a person's eyes can leave you with more knowledge than ever thought imagined. Love, anger, lust, hatred, sympathy and guilt can all express themselves in just one glance. William Faulkner knew of this interesting trait and applied it to his 19___’s novel “As I Lay Dying”. Each character possesses their own unique traits and personalities which drive them to fulfill their end mission: burying their mother in Jefferson. To express their personalities, Faulkner incorporates a variety of similes and metaphors all relating to the eyes. This technique sheds light of their selfish ways. These selfish qualities, not the love for their mother, cause the Bundren children to succeed in their mother's dying wish.

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

Individuals are not born with the conception of vicious intentions. They are simply taught that the concept of betrayal is acceptable throughout the course of their lifetime. Many novels, movies, and tv shows focus on the concept of betrayal because it adds depth and drama to the plot. William Faulkner manipulates this idea in his fictional novel As I Lay Dying by using different perspectives of characters to display acts of betrayal and the outcomes that they develop. Dewey Dell, the daughter of Anse and Addie Bundren, double crosses multiple people throughout the novel, including her own father and brothers Darl and Vardaman. Over the duration of the novel, characters tend to utilize betrayal to promote oneself

She becomes a wife and a mother. She loves her children and they adore her. When she grows old they will take of her, and when she dies, they long for her the rest of their days. The concept of such a desired and completed journey of motherhood and womanhood is dismantled in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. On a spectrum of maternity, characters Cora Tull, Addie Bundren and her daughter Dewey Dell each represent a different degree. Cora is a dedicated mother, Addie struggles to accept the idea of motherhood, and Dewey Dell rejects the role altogether. Through these female characters, Faulkner also aims to point out the absurdity of the universal experience of womanhood.

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.

    Analyzing character in a Faulkner novel is like trying to reach the bottom of a bottomless pit because Faulkner's characters often lack ration, speak in telegraphed stream-of-consciousness, and rarely if ever lend themselves to ready analysis.  This is particularly true in As I Lay Dying, a novel of a fragmented and dysfunctional family told through fragmented chapters.  Each character reveals their perspective in different chapters, but the perspectives are true to life in that though they all reveal information

William Faulkner uses language in a unique way in his novel As I Lay Dying. Language is a form of expression to show thoughts and emotions. Faulkner uses it to convey the individual characters’ thoughts and feelings. He also uses it to draw a line between language and true expression. He shows the limitations of language and the difference between language and words.

William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, tells the story of a family that journeys cross-country with the intentions to find a proper resting place for their mother, Addie Bundren. After reading for only a short time, it becomes clear that two of her sons, Jewel and Darl, play a much larger role in the story than the other siblings. One could find many good points to support either character being labeled as the protagonist of the story, such as the various tensions that can clearly be seen between them. That being said, Darl is, without a doubt, the best possible choice. He is forced to overcome more obstacles, including alienation from his entire family, than any other character, and is truly a changed person by the end of the novel.

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.

In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Faulkner portrays the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest to honor her dying wish to bury her in the town of Jefferson. Faulkner utilizes humor in the novel to lighten the mood of death and as an act of transgression against the orthodox Christian views of death as it relates to good souls dying and becoming angels. Addie Bundren’s son, Vardaman, relates to the orthodox Christian views of death, and the synonymous use of humor with these views ultimately creates an idea about humanity’s perception of death and how they should live, which is enhanced through John Morreal’s “Humor in the Holocaust: Its Coping, Criticizing, and Superiority” and “‘The Abject’- A Brief Definition.”

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

The narrators alternate, showcasing the fluctuating levels of coherence, understanding and emotional strength. The dialect differs from character to character and the language each character uses, varies on level of intensity and subjectivity. Each character’s speech varies from being confessional to teetering on the line of awareness and consciousness. The characters each have their own view on life and on the way Addie Bundren lived her life: through these alternate character’s eyes, we can piece together the bits and pieces of Addie’s life, death and the haulage of her decaying body to Jefferson. The narrative seems to be fragmented however, it also exhibits a type of unity. The story takes place over the course of a few days yet the differing “sub-plots are logically and skillfully interwoven” (Ross 309). Faulkner forces the reader to see the narrative from multiple perspectives.