Being alive doesn’t necessarily mean one is living. It simply means to be in physical existing. To truly live is to have social impact or influence. Therefore to go through life as an outcast one may seem to be living within a stream of meaningless consciousness such as Addie and her son Darl Bundren in William Faulkner 's As I Lay Dying. Both characters merely exist right on the outskirts of the real world as they have no influence on the world around them. This fact is exemplified when the entire Bundren family goes upon an arduous three day journey to bury Addie 's corpse as according to her dying wish. Addie then begins to bound between existence and expiration. Meanwhile her logic-based son Darl struggles to compute how though Addie is dead she is the entire reason for the journey, showing influence from beyond the grave. Thus the Bundren family’s journey communicates the idea that one’s life cannot measured in length but in depth because one’s legacy will outlive one’s physical form from beyond the grave. The novel begins with Addie Bundren 's end. As she dies, she is surrounded by her family, for better or for worse. Her husband Anse, her daughter, and two of her four sons quietly watch over her like patient buzzards until suddenly “[her eyes] go out as though someone had leaned down and blown upon them” and all emotional hell breaks loose (Faulkner 48). Her daughter “flings herself” on to Addie dead body while her youngest son with “all color draining” flees the