As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – American Literature, Classic Novel, Fiction, Modernist Literature
As I Lay Dying cover. English: Published in New York by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. Designer uncredited., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
William Faulkner was an American writer and one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. He is best known for his complex narratives and experimental writing style, which often include stream of consciousness, multiple narrators, and nonlinear timelines.
Faulkner is closely associated with the Southern Gothic tradition and set many of his works in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, inspired by his home state of Mississippi. His novels explore themes of identity, race, family, history, and the South’s legacy of slavery and violence.
Some of his most notable works include “The Sound and the Fury” (1929), “As I Lay Dying” (1930), “Light in August” (1932), and “Absalom, Absalom!” (1936).
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, and his writing remains a cornerstone of American literature.
In this article, we shall discuss his iconic novel, As I Lay Dying, with the help of a few questions.
What is As I Lay Dying about?
As I Lay Dying is a Southern Gothic novel by William Faulkner that tells the story of the Bundren family’s journey to bury their matriarch, Addie Bundren, in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi. The novel follows the family’s arduous and often tragic trek across rural Mississippi, facing numerous obstacles, both natural and personal, as they try to fulfill Addie’s dying wish.
The story is told through the perspectives of 15 different narrators, including each member of the Bundren family and other characters they encounter. This multiplicity of voices gives insight into the characters’ inner thoughts, often revealing conflicting emotions and motivations.
The novel begins with Addie Bundren on her deathbed. After she dies, the family embarks on a difficult journey to Jefferson to bury her. Along the way, they face natural disasters like flooding rivers and dangerous weather, as well as personal struggles—Cash’s leg is injured, Dewey Dell tries to deal with her unwanted pregnancy, and Darl’s mental state deteriorates.
The journey is fraught with obstacles, including the decomposition of Addie’s body, conflicts among the family members, and the selfish motivations of some characters. Anse, for example, is less interested in honoring Addie’s wish than in getting new teeth and potentially remarrying.
As I Lay Dying is both a darkly comic and tragic exploration of family, identity, and the complexities of human emotion, making it one of Faulkner’s most innovative and celebrated works.
What inspired Faulkner to write the novel?
William Faulkner was inspired to write As I Lay Dying by several factors, many of which stemmed from his personal experiences, his deep connection to the American South, and his interest in experimenting with narrative form.
Southern Life and Culture
Faulkner was profoundly shaped by his upbringing in Mississippi, and much of his work, including As I Lay Dying, reflects the struggles of Southern families and communities. The novel, set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, draws heavily on the rural Southern landscape, portraying themes of poverty, hardship, and family dynamics typical of the South in the early 20th century.
Modernist Literary Techniques
Faulkner was interested in experimenting with narrative structure and voice, and As I Lay Dying became a platform for this experimentation. He used multiple narrators (15 different voices), a fragmented and stream-of-consciousness narrative style, and a nonlinear timeline, techniques he admired in other modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
Personal Writing Challenge
Faulkner claimed he wrote As I Lay Dying in just six weeks while working as a night watchman at a power plant. He saw the novel as a personal challenge to push the boundaries of his craft and storytelling.
Themes of Death and Family
Faulkner had an enduring fascination with the theme of death and how it impacts individuals and communities. As I Lay Dying explores the Bundren family’s journey to bury their matriarch, Addie Bundren, offering a portrait of how different characters cope with death, grief, and personal challenges. This theme reflects broader human experiences of loss and the complexity of familial relationships.
Together, these influences contributed to Faulkner’s creation of one of his most celebrated and innovative works.
Who are the primary characters in As I Lay Dying?
In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner presents a cast of characters primarily centered around the Bundren family. Each member of the family contributes their own perspective to the narrative, and their personal struggles and motivations drive the story. Here are the primary characters in the novel:
- Addie Bundren: The matriarch of the family whose death sets the plot in motion. Through her posthumous narration, she reflects on her life, marriage, and the meaning of death.
- Anse Bundren: Addie’s husband, a lazy and stubborn man who insists on honoring Addie’s wish to be buried in Jefferson, despite the hardships the family faces.
- Cash Bundren: The eldest son, a skilled carpenter who is building Addie’s coffin. He is hardworking and stoic, focusing on practical tasks even amid the chaos.
- Darl Bundren: The second son and one of the most central narrators. He is introspective and philosophical, but also becomes increasingly unstable as the journey progresses.
- Jewel Bundren: Addie’s third child, born from an affair. He is fiercely devoted to his mother but expresses his emotions through action rather than words.
- Dewey Dell Bundren: The only daughter, who is pregnant and desperate to find an abortion during the journey.
- Vardaman Bundren: The youngest child, whose confusion and grief are expressed in strange and abstract ways, such as his declaration that his mother “is a fish.”
The Bundren family members each offer distinct perspectives on life, death, and duty. Through their individual narratives, Faulkner explores complex themes of existential despair, isolation, family loyalty, and personal identity. Each character brings a unique voice to the novel, contributing to the rich tapestry of the story’s emotional and philosophical depth.
What are the themes explored in the novel?
As I Lay Dying explores a wide range of themes, many of which are central to William Faulkner’s body of work. These themes include the nature of death, the complexities of family dynamics, identity, suffering, and existential despair.
Here are the key themes in the novel:
Death and Mortality
Death is the novel’s central theme, as the entire plot revolves around the Bundren family’s journey to bury their matriarch, Addie Bundren. The novel explores the different ways people confront and process death, from Addie’s own reflections on her life and death to the varied reactions of her family members.
For instance, Vardaman’s confusion over death leads him to equate his mother to a fish, while Darl contemplates the existential implications of death and its finality. Faulkner uses the physical deterioration of Addie’s corpse as a powerful symbol of the inescapability of death and decay.
Family and Relationships
The Bundrens’ journey to bury Addie serves as a lens through which Faulkner examines the dynamics of family relationships. While they are united by the task at hand, the family members are deeply disconnected from each other, often isolated in their own thoughts and concerns.
Their individual struggles, ambitions, and grievances reveal a family held together more by obligation than affection. Each family member’s perspective reveals their internal motivations and emotional distance, and the journey exposes the fractured nature of their relationships.
Isolation and Alienation
The characters in As I Lay Dying are profoundly isolated, not only from the outside world but also from each other. Despite their shared goal of burying Addie, each family member experiences intense emotional and psychological isolation. Darl, in particular, feels increasingly detached from reality and his family, culminating in his mental breakdown.
The novel also emphasizes physical isolation, as the Bundrens travel through remote rural areas, cut off from meaningful social interaction or support.
Suffering and Resilience
Throughout the novel, the Bundrens endure a series of physical and emotional hardships—Cash breaks his leg, the family’s mules drown, and they face various personal struggles. These trials reflect the theme of suffering, which permeates both the individual characters’ lives and the family’s collective experience.
Faulkner shows that suffering is an inevitable part of life, but he also highlights the Bundrens’ resilience. Their journey becomes a test of their ability to persevere, despite overwhelming obstacles, though that resilience is often tinged with absurdity or tragedy.
Identity and Self-Perception
Each character’s internal monologues reveal their struggle with identity, both in relation to others and within themselves. Addie’s narrative, for example, focuses on her disillusionment with language and how she feels alienated from the roles of wife and mother. Darl’s introspective musings on existence and identity ultimately lead him to question his own sanity.
Characters like Jewel and Dewey Dell are also grappling with personal identities that are shaped by family expectations, societal roles, and their own internal desires.
The Meaning and Limitations of Language
Faulkner delves into the theme of language and communication, particularly its limitations. Addie expresses her disdain for words, which she feels are inadequate to convey true meaning. This theme is evident throughout the novel as many of the characters are unable to articulate their thoughts, desires, or grief effectively.
The novel’s fragmented and often disjointed narrative style reflects the difficulty of communication and the isolation that comes from the failure of language to fully express human experience.
Religion and Spirituality
Religion is a subtle but significant theme in the novel. Many of the characters wrestle with spiritual and moral questions, particularly Anse, who frequently uses religious rhetoric to justify his actions, despite his selfish motivations. Addie’s reflections on life and death suggest a more nihilistic view, where traditional religious beliefs offer little comfort.
Faulkner presents a world where religion exists but is often more of a social or rhetorical tool than a source of deep spiritual meaning.
Poverty and Survival
The Bundrens are a poor, rural family struggling to survive, and their poverty drives many of their decisions. The economic hardships they face are reflected in the physical toll the journey takes on them and the way they approach problem-solving. For example, Cash’s homemade coffin is a symbol of both the family’s resourcefulness and their economic limitations. Anse’s desire for new teeth, which drives some of his actions, underscores the intersection of poverty and vanity in his character.
Madness and Sanity
Darl’s gradual descent into madness is one of the most prominent storylines in the novel. His mental unraveling, which culminates in his being sent to an asylum, raises questions about the nature of sanity and how society perceives and responds to madness.
Darl’s acute awareness of the world around him, along with his philosophical introspection, seems to isolate him from the rest of the family and from reality, highlighting the fragile boundary between sanity and insanity.
Duty and Obligation
The novel examines the idea of duty, particularly familial obligation. Anse insists on fulfilling Addie’s wish to be buried in Jefferson, despite the tremendous toll it takes on the family. Each family member’s sense of duty varies, with some feeling burdened by the task and others—like Jewel—acting out of deep personal loyalty.
The tension between duty to the deceased and self-preservation drives much of the novel’s conflict, reflecting the broader theme of the sacrifices people make out of obligation.
Faulkner’s use of innovative narrative techniques deepens these themes, allowing readers to engage with the characters’ psychological complexities and the broader existential questions that define the human condition. The novel’s thematic depth and emotional resonance continue to make it a significant work in American literature.
What is the style in which the novel is written?
As I Lay Dying is written in a modernist style that emphasizes experimental narrative techniques. William Faulkner employs several distinctive features that make the novel’s style unique and innovative:
Stream of Consciousness
Faulkner uses stream of consciousness, a narrative technique that attempts to capture the continuous flow of thoughts, feelings, and impressions as they occur in the characters’ minds. The characters’ inner monologues often appear fragmented, disjointed, and sometimes illogical, reflecting the complexity of their emotional states and thoughts. This technique allows readers to experience the psychological depth of each character, especially during moments of intense emotion or confusion.
Multiple Narrators
The novel is told from the perspectives of 15 different narrators, including members of the Bundren family and various other characters they encounter. Each narrator brings their own distinct voice, perspective, and biases to the story. This creates a multifaceted narrative where the same event is often described in contrasting or contradictory ways, highlighting the subjectivity of human experience. Some chapters are as short as a single sentence, while others are more detailed, depending on the character’s mindset and ability to articulate their thoughts.
Nonlinear Structure
Though the novel mostly follows the family’s journey chronologically, the narrative often shifts in time and perspective, disrupting traditional linear storytelling. Characters reflect on past events or anticipate future ones, giving the reader a more complex understanding of their motivations and the significance of the journey. The use of flashbacks and memories contributes to this layered narrative structure.
Symbolism and Metaphor
Faulkner frequently uses symbolism and metaphor throughout the novel to enrich its themes. For example:
- Addie’s coffin becomes a symbol of the family’s burdens, both literal and metaphorical.
- Vardaman’s statement, “My mother is a fish,” is a striking metaphor that reflects his confusion and inability to grasp the finality of death.
- Water and fire are recurring motifs, with water symbolizing both life and death (as in the flooding river), while fire is associated with destruction and renewal (as seen in Darl’s arson).
Dialect and Vernacular Language
Faulkner captures the Southern dialect and speech patterns of his characters, grounding the novel in its rural Mississippi setting. The language is often colloquial, and Faulkner reflects the educational and intellectual differences between the characters through their varying levels of articulation. Characters like Anse and Vardaman use simpler, more fragmented language, while Darl’s sections are more introspective and philosophical.
Ambiguity
Faulkner deliberately leaves certain aspects of the story ambiguous. Characters’ motivations, the significance of events, and even the reliability of the narrators are often unclear, inviting the reader to piece together meaning. This ambiguity adds to the complexity of the novel and encourages deeper engagement with its themes.
Dark Humor
Despite the tragic nature of the story, Faulkner injects moments of dark humor throughout the novel. The absurdity of certain situations, like the family’s struggle to transport Addie’s decaying body across a river, creates a grimly comic tone. This blending of tragedy and humor adds another layer to the narrative, emphasizing the grotesque nature of the characters’ circumstances.
As I Lay Dying exemplifies Faulkner’s modernist approach to literature, using a fragmented, multifaceted style to explore the inner lives of his characters and the complexities of human existence.
What is the significance and legacy of As I Lay Dying?
The significance and legacy of As I Lay Dying lie in its groundbreaking narrative style, its deep thematic exploration, and its lasting influence on both American literature and modernist fiction. Here’s how the novel continues to be impactful:
Innovative Narrative Technique
As I Lay Dying is widely celebrated for its use of multiple narrators, stream of consciousness, and fragmented structure. Faulkner’s choice to have 15 different characters narrate the story from their individual perspectives was a bold and experimental technique at the time, and it revolutionized the way stories could be told in literature.
By giving each character a unique voice and inner world, Faulkner demonstrated the subjectivity of reality and the complexity of human consciousness. This technique has influenced many writers who came after him, particularly in the realm of modernist and postmodernist literature.
Thematic Depth
The novel’s exploration of themes such as death, family dynamics, isolation, suffering, and existential despair has resonated with readers and scholars for decades. Its portrayal of a poor, struggling Southern family offers a nuanced look at the human condition, showing how each individual grapples with their own sense of identity, grief, and purpose.
The universal themes of mortality and the burdens we carry, both literal and figurative, continue to make the novel relevant today.
Southern Gothic Tradition
As I Lay Dying is a quintessential work of Southern Gothic literature, a genre that explores the decay and grotesque aspects of the American South. The novel delves into themes of poverty, family dysfunction, madness, and the grotesque (especially with Addie’s rotting corpse and Vardaman’s bizarre observations about death).
Faulkner’s portrayal of the South as a place of deep cultural, historical, and psychological complexity has shaped the way future writers have approached the region, making him one of the most important voices in Southern literature.
Characterization and Psychological Realism
The complex inner lives of the Bundren family members give the novel a psychological depth that was revolutionary at the time. Each character’s monologues reveal their personal struggles, guilt, and desires, often conflicting with the external events.
This deep characterization, particularly through Darl’s existential musings and Dewey Dell’s desperation, helped pave the way for more introspective and character-driven storytelling in later American fiction.
Enduring Influence on Modernist and Postmodernist Literature
Faulkner’s experiments with structure, time, and perspective influenced a wide range of later writers, including Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Cormac McCarthy, and Don DeLillo.
His approach to unreliable narrators, fragmented narratives, and nonlinear storytelling became hallmarks of both modernist and postmodernist fiction. Many of Faulkner’s innovations in As I Lay Dying—especially the blending of multiple perspectives—are echoed in contemporary works that explore fragmented realities or question the reliability of a single truth.
Cultural and Academic Legacy
The novel has become a staple in academic discussions of 20th-century American literature, frequently analyzed in terms of its structure, themes, and contributions to literary modernism. It is often taught in high school and college courses, where it challenges students to engage with complex narrative techniques and deeper philosophical questions about life and death.
Faulkner’s mastery of voice, form, and regional storytelling makes As I Lay Dying a central text in studies of Southern literature and modernist innovation.
Continuing Critical Acclaim
Over the decades, As I Lay Dying has consistently been regarded as one of Faulkner’s greatest works. It has been lauded for its originality, emotional depth, and technical innovation. Many consider it to be a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, and its influence continues to be recognized by critics and scholars alike.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked it 35th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Adaptations and Cultural Impact
The novel has been adapted into films and plays, furthering its impact on popular culture. In 2013, actor James Franco directed and starred in a film adaptation of As I Lay Dying.
Although difficult to translate the novel’s unique structure to the screen, the adaptations illustrate the novel’s lasting cultural relevance and how it continues to inspire artists in different mediums.
The significance of As I Lay Dying lies in its innovative storytelling, psychological depth, and its profound reflection on human nature. Faulkner’s bold experimentation with narrative technique set a new standard for American literature, and the novel’s legacy endures as a touchstone of modernist fiction. It continues to challenge and inspire readers, writers, and scholars with its complex depiction of family, suffering, and existential struggle.
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