Grieving In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

In the novel As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner gives insight to a subject that is often over-looked as a sensitive topic. This subject is known as grief; a topic that influences everyone’s life at some point. Faulkner puts the focus on the children of a woman who passed and their abilities to cope with the loss of their mother. The children demonstrate psychological distress that is commonly associated with the loss of someone close to them leading to the psychoanalysis of their behavior and how they are coping. Each child differentiates from one another in their mannerisms of how they are grieving the loss of their mother; demonstrating the true characteristics associated with the grieving process such as making juvenile connections to have

During the epic journey to travel to bury their mother in Jefferson, the children exemplified characteristics of dealing with their grief in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Cash demonstrates obsession and attention to detail since Addie’s death by the building of the coffin and ensuring his mother's' safety. “Cash’s coffin [was] designed to [ensure the protection of his mother] from the shifting weight of the earth, the seeping of [the] water, and other invasive elements attracted to the body’s ‘animal magnetism’” (Catchings 30). Throughout the novel, Cash was consistently adjusting his mother’s coffin, whether it be by cleaning off the mud, putting her body in backward to allow for her dress to be laid out modestly, or by consistently adjusting the way the coffin sat evenly. Intentionally, Cash does this to preserve his mother's body as it was the last thing he had to hold on to. In many instances, when a child loses a parent they want to do one final thing for them; say a speech at a funeral, dress the deceased, and with young children, many will believe if they do what their parents asked of them before they died that they will come back. In conclusion Cash’s grief is relatively normal as