Addie Bundren Essay

plays heavily upon this theme. In the novel, the primary protagonists are the Bundrens, an impoverished family living in the rural South who are constantly being put in bad situations. Additionally, they are consistently looked down

Characters: Addie is the wife and mother of the Bundren Family. Her death is the spark for the novel. She has an illegitimate child, Jewel who lives with the Bundrens, with the minister. She never loved her husband. She was a schoolteacher. MAJOR Anse is the father and husband of the Bundren Family. He is a poor farmer and a bad father. He had two goals in the book: burying his wife in Jefferson and getting new teeth. MAJOR Cash is the oldest son. A skilled carpenter, he builds the coffin for Addie. Has

idiosyncrasies of the Bundren family, and those they encountered. One of the characters is Addie Bundren, the matriarch of the clan, and the person who's death this story moves upon. Although Addie is dead for most of the book, Faulkner still shows Addie's feelings and attitude in a chapter in which she seemingly speaks from the dead. From this scene we learn about Addie's personality. As a whole Addie is a pessimistic and unfulfilled woman, who marries the ignorant Anse Bundren on a whim. Addie

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

story about the death of a mother, Addie, and her family’s reaction and grieving process, Faulkner adheres to many of Freud’s theories on defense mechanisms. According to Freud, “Challenges from the outer environment and from our inner urges threaten us with anxiety… The process that the ego (subconscious mind) uses to distort reality to protect itself are called defense mechanisms” (Friedman 39). The family’s lack of a mourning process, obsession over burying Addie in Jefferson, and desire to acquire

Jewel Bundren, the middle child in the Bundren household, lives a very complicated life due to his distinct differences with his siblings. Jewel is a young adult whose aspirations and wishes do not relate to the others in his family. Although Jewel is a part of the Bundren family, his only tie to the family is his mother, Addie. Jewel looks nothing like the Bundrens. He clearly resembles his father, Minister Whitfield. This is apparent when Darl describes Jewel as having “pale eyes and a wooden face”

be revealed from one perspective. In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner uses a myriad of people to tell the story of the Bundren family as they journey to the town of Jefferson to bury the mother of the family, Addie. The Bundren 's low social class inhibits their ability to cope with the situation of Addie’s death and properly function as a family. Cash, the oldest of the Bundren children, must work to provide for family and therefore cannot even reflect on the death of his mother. While she is still

many parishioners as many looked to increase their faith in survival. They had faith of survival. They believed things would be easy again in the name of Jesus. There were few riches in the south, but most of them were poor farmers including The Bundrens family: “riches is nothing in the face of the Lord, for He can see into the heart…(Faulkner

the Bundren family journeys across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie Bundren alongside her immediate family. The story is largely told through the many voices of Addie Bundren’s family, as well as individuals in the community. The narratives soon reveal that the journey is not rooted in a noble tribute to the fallen matriarch but rather in selfishness. Although one might develop feelings of sympathy for Addie, Addie’s narrative inevitably casts a drastically different vision. Addie went

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