Just finished “As I lay Dying”. I had a love hate relationship with this novel. As the Bundern’s family traveled farther in their journey, the events became difficult for me to read. The family could not catch a break and Faulkner never really made it clear they deserved to.
On the other hand, I loved the multiple narratives and how they allowed for the development of the story. Each character developed as an individual, separate and distinct, yet still part of the family and part of the train wreck that let the doomed trek continue.
No one in the story came out in the end as “alright, well maybe Anse, who I actually had some sympathy for. Again I feel Faulkner left that to the reader, and I know some of you hated Anse, and I agree he
One common thing that all of the religious characters in As I Lay Dying seem to share is that they are judgemental of others and their mistakes. This is especially true for Cora Tull and Reverend Whitfield, both of whom are very religious, but are also judgemental of others, especially the Bundrens, while ignoring their own lives and pasts. Faulkner’s portrayal of these religious characters reveals that those who are judgmental of the lives and choices of others should address their own failings before worrying about others. If you are someone who is described as religious you should not be judging others because god doesn’t li
In the book As I Lay Dying by William Falkner. The mother, Addie, is dying and she wants to make sure her dying request is fulfilled. She wants to be buried with her family in a nearby town called Jefferson. She also want her coffin to be well built so Cash, her son, builds the coffin right outside her window. When she dies the family starts their expedition to bury her.
The most significant part of As I Lay dying is located on Page 212 in the point of view from Darl, he states “Your mother was a horse, but who was your father, Jewel?” This is significant because this is Darl reveals his awareness of Addie's bad son, asking him who his father is. Darls verbal attack with Jewel, who has a history of being physical, leaves him infuriated. Jewels reaction makes Darl continue to taunt him . An exaple of Syntax is how Faulkner chooses to use italics at the end of Page 213
An archetypal journey may be defined as one where a hero or set of heroes is faced with unexpected trials and misfortunes. An example of such a journey would be Faulkner’s story, As I Lay Dying. In this story, the unstable Bundren family board on a journey to Jefferson in order to keep their mother’s promise of being buried with her own people. The family faces many challenging obstacles, but reach their destination by the end. Similarly, in Dayton and Faris’s Little Miss Sunshine, the dysfunctional Hoover family embark on a journey to California in order to fulfill Olive’s dream to compete in the final beauty pageant. Along the way, the Hoovers encounter many mishaps, breakdowns, but also learn many lessons to reach their goal. Using Faulkner’s
A morally ambiguous character in As I Lay Dying is Anse Bundren. Anse Bundren’s dedication and determination to fulfil his wife’s wish counterpoises the fact that he is self-centered and neglectful towards others. With his two biggest goals in mind, burying his wife and getting a new set of teeth, Anse Bundren demonstrates the theme of self-interest vs. heroic actions. Most of the members of the Bundren family have goals at the end of their journey to Jefferson, but Anse’s two goals are both the most selfish and altruistic goals of the book.
In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying the story is told from different characters creating many different perspectives. All though every character has a voice, they are not all created to intelligent and sympathetic voices. Faulkner controls which characters we closely identify with by the amount of time he devoted to the characters, the number of entries the person had and the attitude that is given to these characters.
In As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner the reader gets to see how hard life is for the Bundren family. The Bundren’s face many obstacles throughout the book and somehow manage to come through most of them okay. The family fulfills their desires along the way to relieve them of these struggles. The main theme in As I Lay Dying is family dysfunction, and this family dysfunction leads to Darl’s insanity.
The author of As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, really contributes to the aspects of literature through his ability to tell a seemingly incredible story through only the “stream-of-consciousness” technique. Faulkner takes his insight beyond the piece, through other’s views and thoughts. Although the characters might be acting differently upon each subject or handling each action in opposite ways, the tone and theme that he uses really brings the whole piece to a perfect balance. In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner displays contradicting elements through the reactions of the family members towards the mother’s death with the use of dialogue, tone, imagery, and internal conflict.
In William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, the reader is encouraged to sympathize with Dewey Dell on account of her quickly waning life. We are given multiple circumstances in the book where Dewey Dell’s life is noticeably described in a negative way, not as a person, but rather how bad of a situation she is in. She is an impregnated seventeen-year-old girl who is unable to find proper treatment to relieve her of a child she doesn’t want. While she is dealing with her own catastrophic incident she is also dealing with the numerous other problems her family is unsuccessfully dealing with. Due to the rest of the Bundren family’s understandably more serious dilemmas taking priority over Dewey Dell’s, she is forced to put off her own extremely urgent predicament.
At first, the title seems to focus on Addie. Of the 59 sections, Addie only narrates one section, and it is filled with stories from the past. She was alive for a quarter of the novel and when she passed, the Bundrens began the journey to bury her as she wished; however, the farther away from home they got, the more it seems as if the family was dying as well. What seems to be rock-bottom from the beginning, quickly dives deeper into a worsened abyss. Addie physically dies, Darl goes insane, Dewey Dell’s innocence dies, Jewel loses both forms of a mother… Faulkner comes at the reader at every angle with a new death, both literally and figuratively.
William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, tells the story of a family that journeys cross-country with the intentions to find a proper resting place for their mother, Addie Bundren. After reading for only a short time, it becomes clear that two of her sons, Jewel and Darl, play a much larger role in the story than the other siblings. One could find many good points to support either character being labeled as the protagonist of the story, such as the various tensions that can clearly be seen between them. That being said, Darl is, without a doubt, the best possible choice. He is forced to overcome more obstacles, including alienation from his entire family, than any other character, and is truly a changed person by the end of the novel.
Analyzing character in a Faulkner novel is like trying to reach the bottom of a bottomless pit because Faulkner's characters often lack ration, speak in telegraphed stream-of-consciousness, and rarely if ever lend themselves to ready analysis. This is particularly true in As I Lay Dying, a novel of a fragmented and dysfunctional family told through fragmented chapters. Each character reveals their perspective in different chapters, but the perspectives are true to life in that though they all reveal information
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your vision is clear, your whole body will be full of light” (). Ever since the creation of mankind, the eyes exist as the window to the soul. Taking one look into a person's eyes can leave you with more knowledge than ever thought imagined. Love, anger, lust, hatred, sympathy and guilt can all express themselves in just one glance. William Faulkner knew of this interesting trait and applied it to his 19___’s novel “As I Lay Dying”. Each character possesses their own unique traits and personalities which drive them to fulfill their end mission: burying their mother in Jefferson. To express their personalities, Faulkner incorporates a variety of similes and metaphors all relating to the eyes. This technique sheds light of their selfish ways. These selfish qualities, not the love for their mother, cause the Bundren children to succeed in their mother's dying wish.
In reading the novel As I Lay Dying, many questions arose in my mind. However, the one that plagued me was the question that I could not pin down. All of the characters in the book have a personality and play a certain role in the tale. However, the one character who fascinated me, yet I could not explain was Cash. Is Cash a bigger player in the novel than it appears on the surface? I believe he is. Cash is the cog in the family that keeps the others from spinning away. Cash becomes, throughout the course of the novel, the patriarchal figure in the novel. He is thrust in to this position through his words, actions, and Anse's total lack of leadership. Cash becomes that patriarch. Diligence. Definition: " Close
understanding had it been told from only one perspective by one of the main characters or the