I Lay Dying By William Faulkner

In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying the story is told from different characters creating many different perspectives. All though every character has a voice, they are not all created to intelligent and sympathetic voices. Faulkner controls which characters we closely identify with by the amount of time he devoted to the characters, the number of entries the person had and the attitude that is given to these characters.

The main theme in As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is family. It is not a pleasant topic throughout the book. Poor or no communication creates intense barriers of misunderstanding and resentment between family member, but not particularly siblings who are rivals for their mother’s love. The family from the beginning isn 't based off love because of the sort of arranged marriage of Anse and Addie Bundren. Most of the explaining of the families dynamic is all explained in Addies one and only chapter.

In "As I Lay Dying" William Faulkner uses multiple points of view to explore the theme of existence as a motionless and meaningless cycle. The cycle is motionless because it is inescapable and unchangeable. One can never leave the cycle of life and death. People perpetuate the cycle by creating life, but in creating life they are creating death, for life irrevocably leads to death. Faulkner depicts existence as meaningless. Nothing really changes in the story. On the surface the characters appear to change, such as Addie dying, Darl going crazy and Anse getting a new wife, but none of these changes are really as relevant as they seem.

The character’s struggles in As I Lay Dying help to get Faulkner ’s point across that humans prevail. He ironically uses death, a way many would consider to prove someone is mortal, to prove humans are immortal because they have souls which endure and prevail through everything. The character’s struggles in As I Lay Dying show how William Faulkner went against any fear he may have had to prove that humans will always endure and

William Faulkner's novel, As I Lay Dying is the story of one family's experiences of the death of their mother and wife, Addie Bundren, and the experiences the family members go through in an attempt to fulfill what they think is a simple wish she had for her funeral arrangements. Addie Bundren's dying wish is to return to her homeland of Jefferson, where she grew up to be buried with "her people" as William Faulkner says in the opening of As I Lay Dying. Faulkner's novel is set over a six day period in the state of Mississippi.

I will admit that the multiple narrators, fragmented storytelling, varied chapter lengths, and accurate dialect make As I Lay Dying a difficult read. During my time with your novel, though, I developed a greater appreciation for the sometimes confusing writing style. That being said, there were minor details that you seemed to overlook in the construction of this nearly seamless, historically accurate work of literature. The part that stuck out to me most like a sore thumb was the sudden transition between simple, “country folk” language and beautiful, ornate descriptions of landscapes and events as simple as a rain storm. The contrast between colloquial and formal language used by one character in a matter of minutes is too stark to convince me that I was still in that character’s

As I Lay Dying, is a novel about the death of Addie Bundren and the events that follow to her burial. The story is told through fifteen different perspectives over the course of fifty-nine narrative chapters. William Faulkner gives the reader insight into what each character is thinking and their reactions to the events taking place. Each member of the Bundren family holds their own secrets that they keep from one another. These secrets eventually distance each member from one another over the duration of the novel. As I lay Dying can at times be confusing to the read due to the language Faulkner uses, the multiple view points of the same event, and the unique personalities of each character.

Death is among one of the most uncomfortable topics for people to talk about, yet it is something that will happen to every one of us. A death of a family member can be very troublesome for people to understand and go through. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, published in 1930, covers this uncomfortable topic in a unique manner. It tells the story through the different point of views of the husband, children, and friends of Addie Bundren. Of all the characters in this novel, one is a mystery yet plays a very important role in establishing the theme. Vardaman is the youngest of the southern Bundren family and has a very hard time with understanding and grieving his mother’s death. The novel treats the theme of mortality as a relief from

As I Lay Dying, was first published in 1930. It is one of the finest examples of William Faulkner’s distinctive writing style. As in his other works, As I Lay Dying showcases Faulkner’s ability to reveal the intricacy of the human psyche. His use of multiple narrators allows readers to explore the inner thoughts of each character. Told from multiple perspectives, the novel has 59 sections written mostly in stream-of-consciousness— a literary style marked by a character’s uninterrupted flow of thoughts. The distinctive writing style and use of multiple narrators in As I lay dying by William Faulkner gives reader and in depth and unique reading experience that should be utilized in more books today.

In the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, relates to what seems to be the main concern and topic throughout the story, which is the death of Addie Bundren. The long and strange journey to Jefferson County, Mississippi to bury their mothers body seems to undertake the family together. Faulkners technique throughout his story presents individual sections of the characters throughout their thoughts, perspectives or the events taking place throughout the novel. You can see all the family members and characters have different characteristics of their identity. This idea can be seen as grotesque and the death of their mother inspires several questions about the character’s existence and identity and they all seem to encounter the death of their mother uniquely.

As I lay dying is considered to some as one of the most notable novels of the twentieth century. Reading the book, when you analyze the structure that Faulkner instilled, this made the story very difficult to comprehend. To support my point, the story is composed of fifteen different points of view from characters in the story. The novel does not have any chapters whatsoever, but rather “sections” and each section looks into one point of view from the fifteen characters. Each section often switches from different events and settings in the story. Aside from the novel’s complications, the storyline was very intriguing due to the chain of events that happened.

Faulkner’s approach to narrating his novel As I Lay Dying is very unique from the traditional one person narrator. His novel is set completely in first person, however the person speaking changes with every chapter. The narration ranges from the primary characters to those necessary to fill in holes. Difficulty arises for a character in first person to remain completely unbiased, especially since everything they communicate becomes tainted with their own perspective. The characters in his novel are extremely biased and constantly insert their opinions into the text, affecting the credibility of the given story.

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is a novel originally published in 1930 depicting a rural family of seven from Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, who are awaiting the impending death of the mother figure, Addie Bundren. She has procured a promise from her husband, Anse, to take her body to her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi for burial, a forty-mile distance. Upon her death, the family places her body into a homemade coffin, loads it onto a mule-pulled farm wagon, and carts it to Jefferson in the July heat. Every inconceivable obstacle occurs during the journey magnifying the family’s dysfunctions to the point where the book borders on being comedic. Eventually, Addie gets interred in Jefferson; however, the journey brings the entire family’s imperfections and secrets to light. Dysfunctional verbal and physical communication amongst the Bundrens, most notably the parents, is a salient theme. Both Addie and Anse Bundren have opposing ways of demonstrating both actions and words that contributes to their dysfunctional marriage.

As I Lay Dying gives us an up-close-and-personal look into the Bundren family as they make a journey to try and bury the beloved mother and wife with the rest of her family. It is written in a stream of consciousness point of view which can make it immensely difficult to understand, at times, and it has little grammar that is correct in many of the chapters. Not only is it written in such a peculiar point of view but it also has a total of 15 narrators and 59 chapters. That already makes this

William Faulkner’s novel “As I Lay Dying” is a novel that depicts the inner thoughts of fifteen narrators. The variety of narrator’s involved gives the novel a varying number of tones due to their differences in personalities, emotions and values. The novel is focused on the death of Addie and the Bundren family fulfilling her final wish of being buried in Jefferson. The novel “As I Lay Dying” was formulated in a manner to draw humor, anger and sadness from the reader at the same time. The ending of the story has a twist to it, which can cause the reader mixed emotions. The reason that is said is because it can be concluded that Anse was a selfish man that did not care about anyone than himself, for example. After burying his wife he purchased his new set of teeth and he even got himself a new wife. The twist of this event is the fact that his son Cash needed money to seek medical attention to avoid his leg from being amputated, but Anse cared more about his teeth and rather having his son losing his leg.