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An Analysis Of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

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Dying Wish If one was to live in Oxford, Mississippi, there is a good chance he would gain something from his experiences there. Whether it be from the people he would meet, or the places he would go, there is a part of Oxford that will stick with him forever. William Faulkner was one of these people. Although he traveled many different places including Los Angeles and New York City, he chose to reside in Oxford. Faulkner gained the most inspiration from Oxford because of its rich culture. Yoknapatawpha County is said to be based off of the county of Oxford, Lafayette, where Faulkner grew up. The reader is able to see Faulkner 's variety of southern views shine through out his novel, As I Lay Dying. Addie Bundren, the mother, is close to passing away and her last wish is to be buried in Jefferson. In order to be buried there, her entire family must make a journey to get her body there. Over the course of the excursion, Faulkner highlights the Bundren’s complicated family structure through his unique …show more content…

For a novel to be considered of high literary merit is an unbelievable honor, and Faulkner accomplishes this merit in As I Lay Dying through his powerful style of writing and the development of the Bundren 's complex

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“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do” (Pele qtd. In Soccerlens). Countless people have done amazing things through perseverance. Sonny was an average boy in a mining town, but he started building rockets and learned a valuable life lesson.

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William Faulkner’s, As I Lay Dying, recounts the tale of Addie Bundren’s childrens’ journey across Mississippi in order to bury her deceased body. Though all of the family members are experiencing similar events during the excursion, Darl Bundren narrates these situations and how he perceives them differently. Thus, one is able to analyze Darl’s actions as he exercises his own individual prose and emotion.

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The narrative, As I Lay Dying, develops a reading of the Bundren family. Each of the family members including the mother that is dead, narrate about themselves in relevance to the entire family. By writing about relatable problems for the audience to relate to, Faulkner discusses the loss of the mother, Addie. Dealing with a significant family loss, Anse, already justifies that Faulkner is fulfilling his own vision of the writer’s duty. The author reflects on Addie, who is the mother in the entire story and

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The family's treacherous journey to Jefferson is filled with danger and excitement, yet Faulkner gives many doses of humor throughout the novel. The characters employ themselves in outrageous acts of irony, from Addie's rejection of her most devoted son, to Anse's concern with his false teeth instead of Addie's death, to Vardaman's calling his mother a fish. This irony would not have been evident if it were not for Faulkner's use of multiple narrators. Faulkner was enchanted by Freudian theories of psychology when he wrote this novel, and recounting the story through various perspectives allows the reader to understand each character's reaction. This enhanced the dark humor throughout the novel because the reader can see into each family member's thoughts on her death.

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In the novel, As I lay dying by William Faulkner, the Bundren family go through a mental journey of loss and death of their mother later to go on a physical journey to bury their mother. To the conclusion of any novel, many have an opinion on what is much happy or not a happy ending. In the case of the ending to As I lay dying, include no real burial of how the mother wanted, which was the point of the physical journey in the first place, secrets comes out, one of the five the siblings gets taken away, and many are left with unfinished business, was not a happy at all for most of the characters. The novel is narrated by 15 characters that are not all part of the Bundren family but in some way connected.

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In the novel, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner shapes the plot based on the looming presence of the absentee protagonist, Addie Bundren. The reader’s knowledge of Addie accumulates through the monologues of other characters, so the reader gains only bits and pieces of Addie’s character. However, after her death, the reader obtains a better understanding of Addie’s voice through her own monologue and as a result, is characterized as cold and selfish. Through the use of similes and interior monologue, Faulkner shows Addie’s tendency to detach herself from the people in her life, which relates to the novel’s overall theme of solitude as Addie adheres to her father’s philosophy that the reason for living is no more than “to get ready to stay dead a long time” (169).

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Darl Bundren’s act of arson exhibits heroism because he performed the act for the sake of others. Faulkner uses irony to subvert the preconceived notions of heroism. Although the protagonist was sent to a mental institute at the end of the novel for

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Religion in As I Lay Dying The time and setting during which the novel was written are very important for understanding William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. This novel was written in 1930 Mississippi; during this time Mississippi was very religious. Unsurprisingly, Christianity and religion also plays a big role in As I Lay Dying particularly through imagery and symbolism that connects different characters to religious figures, including Jesus Christ.

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This novel is about is a family will so many unfortunate events going on in their lives. All they want to do is be there for their very ill mother and make sure her death is peaceful. The family had many things going on in their personal lives and they are putting it before their mother. In my opinion William Faulkner wanted to tell the story of a reality family trying to deal and work through death. “Faulkner’s own compassion became brilliant, powerful, and unabashedly moving” (Sundquist).

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Porter’s and Faulkner’s stories both share the same theme of hopelessness. Each story begins with a situation that seems very hopeless in terms of reviving in any way. Porter’s story begins with poor

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By using unconventional plot structure, Faulkner has created a complex method of storytelling to explore the moral shortcomings of Southern values and ethics during the American Civil War through the means of Emily, a character who is socially and mentally trapped in the old

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Over the course of the novel, Faulkner explores existential behaviors and questions about the meaning of life and death, as well as trying to understand the purpose an individual has in an irrational world. Characters such as Darl, Addie, and Vardaman all convey existentialistic behavior leaving them to view the world from a different perspective than other characters such as Jewel. Throughout the novel, Addie, Darl, and Vardaman all act differently than Jewel due to their existentialist ideas. Although it is important to understand the world around us, if we become submerged into our own thoughts and try to understand the complex world around us, we might lose ourselves in the process. At the heart of the entire novel is Addie Bundren, as her death and decision to be

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Addie Burden, in William Faulkner’s book As I Lay Dying, is portrayed as a character with a cold and bitter heart. She is a women who appears to be void of any emotional attachment, lack of nurture for anyone around her, especially her children, and a strong hatred that seems to permeate her whole being. Her life appears hopeless and without purpose. Addie’s bitter and miserable heart was reflected in the way she lived her life.

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When Faulkner was younger, his last name was spelled differently and pronounced (Falkner). In Faulkner’s teen years, he enjoyed reading and writing poetry. Faulkner was remarkably intelligent, because of his intelligence, school had bored him. He dropped out of school and never received a high school diploma. After dropping out of school, he worked sporadically

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Faulkner seems to see the South as cursed by the origins of its land titles and by the fact that the land is owned at all. According to Robert Coughlan, Faulkner has been attempting to explain this curse all his life. Socially and economically the Faulkner family had fallen in prestige by the time of William’s birth as compared to its status in the earlier nineteenth century, and he was anxious to know why it had done so. “Looking around him at other Oxford families William Faulkner could see that this was not unusual, that what had happened to the Faulkner’s evidently was a part of a larger socio-historical event. To a considerable extent, his books seem to be an attempt to grope through to an explanation of this phenomenon.

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