As I Lay Dying Summary

Tom Walker sat at his bedside feeling rather melancholy for he had not much to do but be chided at by his notorious witch of a wife. They both lived in their humble abode of an apartment in the middle of a city but they had a sublime view that overlooked the scenery of the domicile's dumpsters. They lived poorly, just barely getting by to afford a couple gallons of gas. Tom grew a hatred for almost everyone around and had only a handful of “friends”, he believed that money was the most valuable and important thing in his life.

He brings Ashes to a diner and tells her how he has a possibility to make him on easy street. He informs her that it is more like he needs to pay $200 to some guys because he is debt, but he doesn’t have the money so he asks Ashes to steal from her mother. This is an example of how the father teaches something that he shouldn’t be and that it is okay to steal if you are in a dire need of the money. While this is the last point I believe that it really pulls the whole theme together.

(146) In order to emphasize his humility and goodness, Tom has been cast as a ?one-arm jackleg? (as he so eloquently puts it). He is a carpenter, ably fixing up the Crater property. He performs the miracles of reviving Mrs. Crater?s long-dead Ford (the religious connection reinforced by O?Connor?s characterization of his expression ?as if he had just raised the dead? [151]) and teaching deaf and mute daughter Lucynell to say the word ?bird?. He eschews modern man?s obsession with money and claims that he has a ?moral intelligence? despite his physical shortcomings. By emphasizing his focus on the spiritual nature of life, Tom succeeds in marrying the daughter and receiving money from Mrs. Crater.

Different events, positive and negative, changed his thoughts and helped him become more mature, and a responsible person. Watching his home going to the work made him realize he should do something in his life. Once he started working, he learned to be respectful and reliable even if it took a while for him to change. Once he became more familiar with Penny, she starts to trust him. She starts to give more responsibility. With that in mind, the accident that Penny had changed everything. It ended the relationship between him and Kentucky. However, he moved on without much difficulty. At the end, he was still thinking about his father's words and what he said about the white boys. He never forgot him. Perhaps, the father also had a positive effect on

Jeremy Slick, a lawyer that has represented the West family for decades called three days after the funeral and says. he had a delicate matter to discuss and wanted to hand deliver a copy of my mother’s last will and testament. Therefore, two hours later he arrived, allocated a measly sentence to my mother’s untimely death and then proceed to share the reason I’d received that dinner invitation last Friday evening. She wanted to disclose that she had disinherited me. Mr. Slick pauses and waited for my response. But, I just stood there stoically, without saying a word. When my silence became too much for him to bear, he opened his Louis Vuitton briefcase, placed a copy of the will in my hand and without asking gave me the Cliff’s note version

“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 As I Lay Dying, an important question the reader grapples with is simply why? Why all of these unnecessary hardships just to get to Jefferson? Is the Bundrens’ journey to Jefferson driven by familial duty, or familial love? It’s really driven by neither. Familial duty is the guise in this novel for each family member to get to town—namely, Anse—for some sort of ulterior motive. Anse is the driving force for the other members of the family to find a reason to go to Jefferson. The only person in the Bundren family to convey actual familial love is Darl, who tries to burn his mother’s body—which, we are reminded—makes him insane. Yes, they get to Jefferson and bury Addie’s body, but was she even really a person anymore, or

Another facet of Freud’s defense mechanisms that Faulkner employs in his novel is the use of rationalization. There are several instances throughout the Bundrens’ journey where they act irrationally to fulfill Addie’s wish of being buried in Jefferson. According to Freud “rationalization is a mechanism involving post hoc logical explanations for behaviors that were actually driven by internal unconscious motives” (Friedman 49). The Bundrens did not even begin their journey to Jefferson until ten days after Addie had died. The journey to Jefferson itself was unreasonable for the Bundrens to complete. Jefferson is far away, the bridge to get there was flooded, and they are a poor family who must rely on others to help them along their journey. While Anse, Addie’s husband, does not appear to be grieving and does not mention Addie’s death, we learn that “his mind is set on taking her to Jefferson,” despite warnings of rain and a flooded bridge (Faulkner 86).

Poor Addie. All she wanted is to be buried away from that crazy place, from this cold house, where she spent most of her life, to Be away from a selfish husband who tortured her for all her life, and away from the children, who have always been children of Anse Bundren, not Addie’s. However, who knew that even after her death, performing her last will, all of the characters, except Darl, as for me, do not cease to torment her again and insult on the dead body of their

Stamp Paid, a former slave who ferries Sethe and Denver across the Ohio River, tried to take Beloved’s corpse from the mother’s clinging hands and give Denver to her. A mother killing her own child is an act that subverts the natural order of the world. A mother is expected to create life, not destroy it, but with Sethe’s case, she was insane and out of control at that specific moment when she imagined that her child might face the same assault in future. Thus, she prefers to put an end to this situation. On the other hand, we notice that she was very anxious about the feeling of Beloved, her murdered child. She stated, “Do you forgive me? Will you stay? You safe here now”

He bought her gifts such as apples and a glass lantern. He does everything for a show and to get self-glory. He buys 200 acres of land and he gives it to the people of Eatonville. He celebrated with the town giving them cheese and crackers following a barbecue. Janie is tied down by him she couldn’t have a relationship with anyone in the town. He thought everywhere they went and men were in their presence that they were trying to take her away from him. She didn’t have any freedom during speeches she could only stand there and just look pretty according to his standards. Almost In a sense as if she was his slave. She began to tell him how she is always muted all the time. He told how he want her head to be covered at all times and how when they went in the store she had to wear a head rag so her long hair wouldn’t hang down. She eventually got tired of him and decided she had enough of his stuff which made her decide to run away.

does something to make Celie happy and he uses all the money he has saved to

When Carvers father left the family to work in northern California it was the start of his decline, but it was also a turning point in his relationship with his son who was starting to find his own way in life. Thoughout his dads illness Carver married and started his own family but he mentions “During those years I was trying to raise my own family and earn a living. But, one thing and another, we found ourselves having to move a lot.” (Carver, 387) It is here that we realize the path that Carver is taking is very similar to the one he watched his father take while growing up. His own struggles with alcohol and money seem to be a repeat of his fathers mistakes.

Death is a topic that unites all of humanity. While it can be uncomfortable to think about, confronting death in unavoidable. “Dying” addresses that discomfort and universal unwillingness to consider the inevitability of death. Pinsky’s use of imagery, symbolism, and tone create a poetic experience that is like death, something every reader can relate to. In “Dying,” Pinsky describes how people are oblivious and almost uncaring when it comes to the thought of death. Pinsky is trying to convince the reader that they shouldn’t ignore the concept of death because life is shorter than it seems.

The ability of the father to carry on with life after his son's death is one part of the stereotype that pertains to the male figure. The male character is suppose to be someone who does not cry, someone who is full of inner strength and is the central rock for all those around him in a time of crisis. The husband in "Home Burial" fulfills these requirements. After the burial, he continues on with his daily chores and attends to the various needs of the farm. These actions are not ones of denial but acceptance. He knows that he and his wife must carry on with their lives after an appropriate period of mourning is over. Understandably, his vision of the length of that time period is considerably shorter than his wife's. He understands that life is for the living and not for the dead. He understands that his son is dead. He also understands that he cannot force these views on his wife, because she must come to her own conclusions and find her own closure to her son's death.