Analysis Of ' As I Lay Dying '

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 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.

Narrative point of view can express a perspective that is different to my own way of seeing the world by presenting characters that are different to ourselves, that we can still empathise and connect with. For example, The Bone Sparrow uses a majority of 1st person Point of View, which is the most effective for this. In The Bone Sparrow, we empathise and feel a more personal connection to Subhi, but he is the most different to me in terms of personality and perspective.

“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.

As I Lay Dying and Little Miss Sunshine are two stories about a family’s journey and the setback they face along the way. The type of journey the families endure follows the path of rising and then falling that occur throughout their time together. Little Miss Sunshine is an effective contemporary version of the archetypal journey when compared to As I Lay Dying because of the similar archetypal events, characters and symbolism.

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.

William Faulkner in his book, As I Lay Dying, portrays a Mississippi family which goes through many hardships and struggles. Faulkner uses imagery to illustrate an array of central themes such as the conscious being or existence and poverty among many others. From the first monologue, you will find an indulgence of sensual appeal, a strong aspect of the novel. Each character grows stronger and stronger each passage. One of the themes in As I Lay Dying is a human's relations to nature. Faulkner uses imagery to produce a sense of relation between animals and humans.

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 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.

William Faulkner’s use of interior monologue in as As I Lay Dying allows the reader to experience the story from more then one persons perspective. Through the thoughts of Darl Bundren the reader comes to understand what is going on within the family. On the other hand Anse Bundren allows the reader to get a different perspective on the family. The reader gets the perspective of an outsider through Cora Tull’s narration. The make up of these characters as well as others allows the reader to see all sides of the story.

Staggered, yet continuous of each other, the monologues are in rendition of the character’s memories, inner thoughts, accounts or feelings of tragedy encompassed by the dying, death and burial journey of Addie Bundren. Addie Bundren is the wife of Anse Bundren and mother to Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. The characters take turns, sometimes simultaneously, expressing their thoughts about this tragedy and the life they live. Similar to the cubist expression, their thoughts do not attempt to recreate their situation but rather truly experience it, expressing lack of context and transition in its nontraditional form. This approach seems disorderly as one character does not pick up where another leaves off, however, Realism and Authenticity suggest that this is art audience.

Death is among one of the most uncomfortable topics for people to talk about, yet it is something that will happen to every one of us. A death of a family member can be very troublesome for people to understand and go through. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, published in 1930, covers this uncomfortable topic in a unique manner. It tells the story through the different point of views of the husband, children, and friends of Addie Bundren. Of all the characters in this novel, one is a mystery yet plays a very important role in establishing the theme. Vardaman is the youngest of the southern Bundren family and has a very hard time with understanding and grieving his mother’s death. The novel treats the theme of mortality as a relief from

Faulkner’s approach to narrating his novel As I Lay Dying is very unique from the traditional one person narrator. His novel is set completely in first person, however the person speaking changes with every chapter. The narration ranges from the primary characters to those necessary to fill in holes. Difficulty arises for a character in first person to remain completely unbiased, especially since everything they communicate becomes tainted with their own perspective. The characters in his novel are extremely biased and constantly insert their opinions into the text, affecting the credibility of the given story.

William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying follows the Bundren family on their trek along the countryside to bury Addie, the matriarch of the family. Through Faulkner’s usage of internal monologue, each character reveals a different aspect of their personality. One of the most noticeably erratic viewpoints in the novel is that of the youngest Bundren, Vardaman, whose stream-of-consciousness is so volatile that it raises debates on whether or not he is suffering from psychological illnesses. Some argue against this fact, claiming that his irregular thoughts are due to his youth and inability to fully comprehend the situation happening around him. However, Vardaman’s sense of unreality when assigning human to animal relationships within the novel reveals signs of Neurotic Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Psychosis. Vardaman does suffer from other psychological issues besides being young.

     In his book, As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner pioneers new and interesting literary forms. His most obvious deviation from traditional novel writing was the new style of narration in which he used all the main characters as the narrator at one point or another. This allowed the reader to gain insight into the character’s thoughts, and also to prove very interesting and entertaining. Faulkner also ignores all boundaries that sane people have placed upon the English language to keep it readable. Faulkner forges his own set of rules for syntax that allow for a very choppy yet elegant stream of consciousness in the character’s narration. Lastly, Faulkner makes incredible leaps away from established