As I Lay Dying Analysis Essay

As I Lay Dying Analysis A death in the family results in hard times and how we react to it. In the novel, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner describes the life of a poor, dysfunctional family traveling across rural Mississippi to bury their deceased wife and mother. Faulkner uses point of view to allow the reader to experience the emotion, mindset, and struggle of each individual character. The wife and mother, Addie, is on her death bed while her oldest son, Cash, is trying to perfectly build her coffin since he is a bit of a perfectionist in the story. Her other two sons, Darl and Jewel, continue to antagonize each other. Darl constantly asks Jewel does he know if “Addie Bundren is going to die?”(Faulkner, 40) knowing that Jewel was her favorite and Jewel was heartbroken by her death but never showed it. This conflict continues throughout the novel demonstrating the feelings the two brothers have for their mother. The family continues onward to Jackson, Mississippi where they are to bury Addie as her dying request according to her husband, Anse. The Bundrens reach a river that is a difficult cross because of the rushing current. Cash, Jewel, and Darl try crossing the river using the broken bridge, but fail by arguing

Vardaman admits that he knows who set the fire when he states, “when I went to find where they stay at night, I saw something that Dewey Dell says I mustn’t tell nobody.”(225) He saw Darl set the fire and while sharing it with his sister, she tells not to tell anybody. Figuring out that Darl set the fire, they allow him to be sent away “Darl he went to Jackson is my brother Darl is my brother.” (249) Faulkner illustrates Darl going mad in a chapter where he talks to himself in first and third person on the train being watched by two men. By setting the fire this also shows how Darl is once again trying to get rid of Addie by burning down the barn with her in