As I Lay Dying Literary Analysis

Author William Faulkner in his Nobel Prize Acceptance speech offers advice to young and aspiring writers about what “alone can make good writing.” As said in his speech “the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.” What Faulkner is saying that the only thing worth writing about is how to live life along with the struggle of one’s internal self, a topic that is difficult but “worth the agony and sweat.” One of Faulkner’s famous works is the novel As I Lay Dying, which tells the story of a mother’s revenge from each of the family member’s point of view. As I Lay Dying exemplifies

Whitfield has no problem committing sin as long as he is not caught, and that same fear in people finding out is what drives him to wanting to confess. “When they told me she was dying, all that night I wrestled with Satan, and I emerged victorious” (Faulkner 177), Whitfield struggles with having to confess before Addie Bundren tells everyone on her death bed. On his way to the Bundren house he comes across difficulties such as the Tull bride collapsing, and uses this opportunity to doubt himself. He later prays to “just let me not perish before I have begged forgiveness of the man whom I betrayed… let me not be too late; let not the tale of mine and her transgression come from her lips instead of mine” (Faulkner 178). Whitfield on his way to the Bundren house struggles with wanting

Now the only girl in the family she struggles with taking over her mother’s role along being in a household full of men and becomes paranoid and sexually threatened at the way men look at her. Dewey Dell finds out she is pregnant with Lafe’ child, who instead of marrying her, gives her ten dollars for an abortion, this is when she has to face the reality in that she is all alone, and things don’t always go the way she plans. Dewey Dells obsession with the need to get an abortion takes over her thoughts, and she becomes consumed with her own needs that even after her mother’s death all she cared about was herself. "He could fix it alright, if he just would. And he dont even know it. He could do everything for me if he just knowed it" (Faulkner 63). Desperate to get an abortion she struggles with Darl in getting the family to go to Jefferson. Her hatred towards Dark increases on the daily when she discovers that Darl know about her pregnancy via telepathy. "He said he knew without the words like he told me that ma was going to die without words, and I knew he knew because if he had said he knew with the words I would not have believed that he had been there and saw u " (Faulkner 27). Dewey Dell’s conflict with Darl ends up with her sending him to a mental institute in Jackson, Mississippi by ratting him out for a barn fire. Dewey Dell thinks that