Trope In As I Lay Dying

In his novel As I lay Dying Faulkner explores the connections between a family with a history of violence and mistrust while they attempt to fulfill the final wish of their matriarch. Throughout the story the family gradually become macabre caricatures of their former selves and attempt to improve their meager positions in society by fighting one another at every opportunity. As the journey unfolds the audience is given insight into the past of the female characters Cora Tull, Addie, and Dewey Dell who are uniquely portrayed as both victims and the perpetrators of violence in this already highly dysfunctional family unit. This archetypal characterization reinforces the themes that persist throughout the novel, and demonstrates

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.

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying examines the connections and disconnections between speech, silence, and the meaning of words. However, having words is as good as having no words because the characters in this book, especially the members of the Bundren family, use words that obfuscate their true emotions. Faulkner uses his characters to portray speech as just another factor of nominalism and allows only silence to present the truth.

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.

Addie Bundren is the mother of the Bundren family, the main subjects of William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying. The novel is centered on her death and burial as her family travels to bury her with her family in Jefferson. Throughout the novel, the reader gets an understanding of who Addie Bundren is, but only through other characters’ memories and perceptions of her; excluding the chapter where Addie speaks for herself where she gives the reader a true account of her thoughts and feelings about the world and her family.

Faulkner’s Description of Dewey Dell in As I Lay Dying William Faulkner’s phrasing, point of view, and grammar in his polyphonic novel, As I Lay Dying, strategically employs the miserably pessimistic yet juvenile voice of Dewey Dell to characterize her as the novel’s naïve victim. The only surviving female in the Bundren family, Faulkner presents the hardships that Dewey Dell must endure. In addition, as an uneducated girl with no guidance, Dewey Dell experiences an uncertainty in many issues that arise in her life.

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.

    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.

Most works of literature often use events and objects to display a deeper meaning to the current situation. In As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, there are many references that connect the Bundren family to mythological, Biblical, and classical allusions. Faulkner’s use of various types of allusions emphasizes the characters’ behavior and relationship to each other.

His family wasfinancially stable, but his father, Murry, was an alcoholic. Their family dinners were done silentand Murry unexpectedly left town for a couple of days and then came back. Faulkner’s mother,Maud, was an independent, hardheaded woman. Murry and Maud fought really often. WilliamFaulkner’s books explore family dynamics, race, gender, and social class. Faulkner was somewhat misfit. It is said that he used to invent stories about himself. (“As I Lay Dying Analysis”).As I Lay Dying was a required to read in Pulaski County High School, a high school inSomerset, Kentucky as a reading assignment in an advanced English class. The book waschallenged because the book contains profanity and a part about masturbation. School boardmembers were concerned for the book’s language and dialect. Central High School in Loisville,Kentucky decided to ban the book for profanity and confusion on the existence of God (“Bannedand/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20thCentury”). Some of the bans were quickly reversed, but some remained banned (Baldassarro,“As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner”). “Then I would wait until they all went to sleep so I could lie with my shirt-tail up,hearing them asleep, feeling myself without touching myself, feeling the cool silence blowingupon my parts and wondering if Cash was yonder in the darkness doing it too, had been doing itperhaps for

Each female character in As I Lay Dying question what it means to be a woman, and how it affects their place in society. William Faulkner carefully incorporates issues of sexuality and gender roles into his novel, which were also common themes discussed during the 1900’s. By examining Addie Bundren, Dewey Dell Bundren and Cora Tull one can see that each of their gender roles was clearly defined. All three women search for the meaning of life while exploring ideas of religion and sin. Faulkner shows the expectations placed on women and how it affected each of their individual identities. By using topics such as pregnancy, marriage, motherhood and sex one can easily view As I Lay Dying from a feminist lens, and see the difficulties women faced in the rural south during this time period.

The conversation to redefine gender roles is often dominated by polarized extremes. In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner explores the social and psychological effects of the traditional southern female gender role with the character Addie Bundren. Through Addie’s narrative, Faulkner presents the struggles of a woman as she lives the oppressive consequences of expressing her sexuality: childbearing and motherhood. The same consequences are reflected in the destruction of the life of Addie’s unwed daughter, Dewey Dell. Through these women’s stories ,Faulkner reveals the damaging effect of institutional patriarchy in women’s lives as storyteller rather than feminist.

Faulkner’s use of southern gothic writing style helps the reader build a mental depiction of Miss Emily. When the town sent their ambassadors to discuss the taxes that were owed, Faulkner described Miss Emily as “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water” (2182). This description gives the reader the sense that the character is not well. Faulkner’s description that Miss Emily looked bloated achieves the desired effect on the reader to show how hideous she appears. This graphic description, combined with the author’s depressing description of the parlor (2182), makes the reader think of death. The reader gets the sense of being in a funeral parlor which helps to strengthen Faulkner’s narrative.

William Faulkner’s unconventional writing style is widely renowned for his disregard of literary rules and his keen ability to peer into the psychological depths of his characters. His novel As I Lay Dying is no exception to his signature style. This book sets forth the death of Addie Bundren, her family’s journey through Yoknapatawpha County to bury her with her relatives in Jefferson, Mississippi, and examines each character in depth from a variety of perspectives. While this journey wreaks havoc among members of the family, As I Lay Dying serves as a dark reminder that life is to be lived and that happiness is within reach.