William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying Essays

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.

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 writer composes the story from the perspective of an analyst. She alludes to occasions later on, facts, and information that no character could have known in the setting of the story. Incorporated into the content are genuine quotes said or composed by the general population she expounds on, including the primary character. She utilizes an extremely objective voice, giving successive analysis of distinctive individuals' outlook and continually alluding to insights to demonstrate her point. Since the book does not focus on the point of view of any single character, it peruses more like a news article than a story, which frequently exhausting its groups of readers. Accordingly, Hillenbrand's written work style once in a while obstructs the correspondence of her thoughts because she regularly includes actualities, quotes and investigation in the book; it usually bores audience on the grounds that it peruses more like a news article instead of a

The whole technique that Faulkner uses with language and his characters most fits stream of consciousness. He puts pure thought into the language. This technique helps to fix any of the limitations that language puts on conveying thought. This shows in

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.

Faulkner uses syntactical strategies throughout his speech to assist him in communicating his message to his audience. In the third paragraph he emphasizes a syntax device known as anaphora, when stating, “He must learn them again… He much teach himself… He writes not of love…He writes not of the heart…”.The anaphora helps Faulkner be effective in his argument by the repetition of words to help him get his view of things across to the audience. To also succor his effectiveness he uses polysyndeton, which is used to draw the audience’s attention therefore adding the effect of persistence and intensity to help keep his audiences attention, making his speech effective. An example of polysyndeton is when he declares “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” This quote helps signify that authors need to write from their soul and

It can be argued that any thoughts of Caddy end up destroying Quentin’s sense of order and replacing it with a sense of panic and urgency. Quentin’s mind lives in the past, and while there is a fair amount of attention to the present moment, much of his section consists of his thoughts (Brown 545). This attention to time is what contributes to the chaos in his mind because he looks back to his inability to stop Caddy from dirtying herself and the entire family’s honor. His mind constantly looks back to past events which remind him of the suffering he has gone through in trying to satisfy his code of honor, which only contributes to a sense of misdirection in his life. In “The Loud World of Quentin Compson”, it is noted that Faulkner purposely “enhanced the dramatic immediacy” (Ross 250) of some scenes in order to show how chaotic his mental processing becomes when Caddy is brought up. He wrote Quentin’s section in a way that would emphasize the struggle Quentin faces in trying to restore his family’s honor by ignoring punctuation and grammar, among a plethora of other methods. It is known that Quentin’s section consists of only Quentin’s narration, and it varies drastically from orderly, grammatically proper sentences to disorderly, crude sentences in order to clearly mark lines between moments and thoughts

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

Throughout the novel, John Steinbeck alternates the chapters, constantly switching from a third person omniscient point of view, focusing upon the Joad family, to an unknown narrator, differentiating in points of view as the storyline progresses. For example, the narrator focuses on illustrating the scene of Oklahoma during the dust bowl in chapter one, but later uses first person pronouns in the midst of the novel, such as, “Layin’ there. Jesus, what I could do with that, with five acres of that! Why, hell, I’d have ever’thing to eat” (235). The unknown narrator switches point of view quite often, especially within the climax and falling action of the novel’s odd chapters; however, the narrator also allows the reader to further understand

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.

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

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.

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.

While reading Absalom, Absalom! I was amazed at the number of times one of the narrators would refer to faces or voices as being present rather than to the people themselves. In almost every chapter this synecdoche appears, reducing many of the characters to images, shadows and memories. I think Faulkner uses this device to enhance the fact that the story is told from memory-- much of it from the point of view of the characters‘ childhoods.