Essay on Critical History of "As 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.

Another example, is when Addie speaks. She speaks to reveal her selfishness. She admits to having an extramarital affair with the local preacher, who is Jewel’s biological father. The reader can see this when Addie says, “I gave Anse Dewey Dell to negative Jewel. Then I gave him Vardaman to replace the child I had robbed him of” (176). Further, Addie admits that she wants to be buried in Jefferson because she wants to spend eternity as far away from the Bundren’s as possible.

“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

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

It would seem that the primary struggle that Darl faces in the novel is the differentiation between “being” and “not-being” and the value, meaning, and importance of his own self. In the same way that Vardaman does not understand mortality, Darl does not understand himself, and this severely clouds his judgment when it comes to coping with the death of his mother. Darl seems to be a rational person at the beginning of the novel, but he plagues himself with questions regarding the fact that, “In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not” (Faulkner 80). Darl cannot navigate his own identity, and it seems that this, combined with his subpar relationship with Addie, leads him to attempt to cope by repressing his despair in multiple failed attempts to understand himself. Butchart notes that “By dissociating himself from his mother and employing dangerous defense mechanisms, Darl’s sanity atrophies” (Butchart 60). The descent to madness that Darl endures is a sympathetic plight to most readers, since Darl is arguably one of the more sympathetic characters in the novel, but this decline is ultimately guided by his inability to come to terms with himself and his actions, especially concerning the fact that he was not present at the death of his mother. Jewel copes with the death of his mother in a way that is similar to the method that Darl utilizes, in that he represses his feelings, despite the fact that his close connection with Addie allows the reader to assume that he is the most hurt by her death. Jewel then uses his grief to fuel his devotion to heroic duty, which is primarily seen in his efforts to save Addie from the burning barn and

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.

He usually doesn’t get along with his brother, Jewel, and often scrutinizes and makes fun of him, most likely out of pure jealousy. At one point, Darl goes so far as to try to keep Jewel isolated from his mother as she is dying. Darl also has what can only be described as telepathic abilities. He is the only character in the book that can accurately describe what is occurring at locations other than the one he is at. This ability is discovered when it becomes obvious that Darl knows of Dewey Dell’s pregnancy, despite the fact that she has maintained absolute secrecy in the matter. In fact, Darl discovers Addie’s death telepathically, and is able to tell Jewel about her death before either one of them have even returned to the house to see her. Darl’s own telepathy will become the biggest obstacle he is forced to confront in the novel, and it will eventually lead to his demise.

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.

Sections 1-14 AILD Reader Response Assignment Module 11 Maggie Wyatt Character List Darl: one of Addie and Anse’s sons, shorter than Jewel “anyone watching us can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own.” He loves his mother Addie even if she didn’t dote on him, emotional and expresses his love, and he narrates most of the first section. He is jealous of his younger brother because Jewel received all of his mother’s attention and he makes the three dollar trip so Jewel won’t be around when Addie passes. As Cora thinks Darl is like his mother “I always said Darl was different from those others. I always said he was the only one of them that had his mother’s nature, had any natural affection.”

The conversation to redefine gender roles is often dominated by polarized extremes. In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner explores the social and psychological effects of the traditional southern female gender role with the character Addie Bundren. Through Addie’s narrative, Faulkner presents the struggles of a woman as she lives the oppressive consequences of expressing her sexuality: childbearing and motherhood. The same consequences are reflected in the destruction of the life of Addie’s unwed daughter, Dewey Dell. Through these women’s stories ,Faulkner reveals the damaging effect of institutional patriarchy in women’s lives as storyteller rather than feminist.

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.

He was a product of Addie's infidelity to Anse, an act that was on Addie's mind until the day she died. The guilt she felt, even to the husband she had no love for, was so overwhelming that she produced both Dewey Dell and Vardaman to "negative" the sin that was Jewel's birth. Her self-worth was then so low that she felt she was ready to die after her recompense to Anse was finished. "And now he has three children that are his and not mine. And then I could get ready to die" (Faulkner 176). Addie had strong opinions on sin, as shown in her one chapter of the novel. She recounts an instance with her neighbor Cora Tull: "She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too" (Faulkner 176). Addie's sin with Jewel seems to perplex other members of the family through their journey to bury her; Darl's inability to mentally communicate with Jewel leads him to question Jewel's origin. Darl also seemed to put his views into the mind of Vardaman, though the poor neglected child was confused enough. Addie and Anse's relationship, as explained in Addie's narrative, has an obvious lack of intimacy, closeness, and meaningfulness. This can be seen as a sin inherited by their daughter, Dewey Dell. Her sexual curiosity and naïveté lead her to an unwanted pregnancy with a father, Lafe, who does not care about her.

Oxford provided Faulkner with intimate access to the rich character of the rural south which was conscious of its past and separated from the urban-industrial mainstream that Faulkner found very distracting. He wanted to accurately portray life in the south and he “could not have done otherwise than to include Blacks among the people who inhabit the lands of his novels”(Glissant, pp. 56). Faulkner did not pretend to understand the suffering and complexity of the lives of the black community but, because he grew up witnessing their struggle he was able to represent them in an honest and sometimes brutal fashion. He spent his whole life in the south and, “Blacks lived there … They were servants in the Falkner family or perhaps workers for the railroad company founded by his great grand-father. They were surely mule drivers or farm laborers …”(Urgo and Abadie, pp. 137). It is difficult to say whether or not Faulkner felt sympathy for these people but it is clear through Faulkner’s writing that he believed their story needed to be told.