As I Lay Dying Intertextual Analysis

Most of the stories readers read, many author used intertextual elements in their stories. The reasons why the author used intertextual elements is because they wanted the readers to use their scheme and asked themselves, why this is in this text? What is the purpose behind this? By having the readers used their scheme, they are able to find the meaning or connection between this text/passage related their everyday lives. In the story, As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, the author used many intertextual elements in each ‘chapter’ from each character’s point of view in the story. Especially in the passage of Dewey Dell’s and her relationship with Lafe, Faulkner expression this passage into another meaning and the reason between the cotton

In this section of the book, she explained about the first time that her and Lafe were picking down the row, “The first time me and Lafe picked on down the row.” (26). At first, some readers may not understand why the Dewey Dell and Lafe were down the ‘row’, but, by looking online and found that ‘row’ meant that Dewey Dell and Lafe were picking cotton down the field. Afterwards, Dewey Dell said “… And we picked on toward the secret shade and our eyes would drown together touching on his hands and my hands and I didn’t say anything. I said ‘What are you doing?’ and he said ‘I am picking into your sack.’ And so it was full when we came to the end of the row and I could not help it.” (27). The intertextual element Faulkner used to represent that Dewey Dell and Lafe had sexual interaction was by the comparison of cotton and sack. He used cotton and a sack to hint that the two were not picking cotton but that Lafe was touching her ‘sack’ and Dewey Dell did not seem to mind what Lafe was performing because towards the end of the field, whether her desire were clear or not she was already debating on having sex with him. Faulkner used metaphor to indicate that Lafe was not touching her sack of cotton, but, he actually was feeling up on Dewey Dell’s ‘sack’ that lead them having sex since Dewey Dell “could not help it” as she mentioned in the passage, she was turned on by this

By consulting theses sources, it would be beneficial because the library or online library can help limited ideas to the topic/book and give a short brief summary about it before clicking on it. The library has many information about almost every book so it will be a useful source. The reason why it would be convenient to look online for people’s essay is because it would be helpful to see what they think about the topic and compare but not using their idea or thought process into this research essay, but figured out why they thought of that particular idea and used the process of scheme from there on. By exploring the internet, it would help by discovering more certain answers to be revealed. In order for that to occur, people have to dig deeper to retrieve the data first. This solution would be the last resort in order to gain more information towards the research claim