In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Faulkner employs several points of view to immerse readers into the complex and absurd world of the Bundren family. By utilizing various characters’ first person narratives, Faulkner allows readers to be drawn into the compelling yet somehow simultaneously repulsive family dynamics, offering only a few brief glimpses into how other individuals see the Bundrens from an outside perspective. This narration style creates an incredibly unreliable retelling of the story, while at the same time giving readers a chance to view the chain of morbid events that compose the plot of As I Lay Dying from the point of view of the very family that partakes in such insanity. Throughout the novel, each Bundren has his or her own personal motive to get to Jefferson. Despite the fact that they all embark on the journey with the goal to bury Addie, they all have other reasons for wanting to arrive in Jefferson that distract them from Addie’s burial. In fact, Addie’s burial, although presented as the driving force for the entire novel, is so incredibly anticlimactic when it actually occurs that it lasts a single sentence.
Dewey Dell is the only daughter of the Bundren family. Aside from Addie Bundren and their neighbor Cora Tull, Dewey Dell is essentially the only core female character in the entire novel. Dewey Dell’s character is thus one that is extrapolated to reflect the struggles of many young women in settings that parallel that of As I Lay Dying (a