In As I Lay Dying, author William Faulkner introduces the audience to Jewel Bundren, a violent and harsh bastard who is no less than a “jewel” to his mother. He is an outcast, a third son, and the product of an affair. However, his mother Addie, who has been stifled by her lackluster marriage and the conformity of the church, sees Jewel as a gift. She finds joy in the sin and rebellion that created her son, and the more Jewel sins and rebels, the more she feels linked to him. However, Jewel is much deeper, emotionally, than his “wooden-face”. Though Faulkner leads the audience to misperceive Jewel as immoral and evil, the author later shows that the character is actually very emotional and caring; Jewel just reveals his affections in strange ways.…
As I Lay Dying consist of numerous narrations and individual sections. Each chapter containing a different character’s conscience and thought process. This is called stream of consciousness, by using this method it gives an expression to the confused and disordered flow of thoughts in each character. In addition, most of the chapters and narrators in the novel are from one single family, the Bundren family. In this family the members consist of Addie, Darl, Jewel, Cash, Anse, Dewey, and Vardaman. These characters present great intuition to the events and problems in the household.“It’s because he stays out there, right under the window, hammering and saw on that goddamn box” (14). Having this stream of thought, the reader knows that jewel is…
William Faulkner's style in As I Lay Dying is unique from other writers because of the way in which he focuses on the inner thoughts of each character that the chapter is focusing on instead of describing what the character is thinking.The chapters that Darl is the main character are complex and hard to understand because he describes things in poetic…
The novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner took place in a rural area in Mississippi during the 1920s. The Bundren family were living in poverty and it was difficult to earn a living off the land because the river that kept over flooding. Social classes were a big motif in this novel; the family was so poor that they depended on their neighbors who were wealthier farmers.…
Often times in novels, there will be a character that has the ability to appear as little as possible and still be able to have one of the biggest impacts on the rest of the characters and on the novel as a whole. In As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren is one of those types of characters. She has only one chapter in the entire book, yet is somehow able to have the biggest influence on the rest of the characters. She is the basis of the story, and everything relates back to her.…
In As I Lay Dying, the mother, Addie, only has one chapter (and the point she has it is quite strange because she's already dead). In Chapter 40, Addie recounts her life up until her death, where she has several moments of existentialism. Most of which come in the beginning of the chapter.…
I would recommend this book to everyone because this really sends a message to society. I feel like this book is good for anyone although I think there were some parts on the book that kind of didn't make any sense. After reading this book, I think I would find more books that are similar like science…
I enjoyed this book thoroughly and always kept me intrigued until the end. It had small twists in it that were rather easy to interpret but it was also very interesting. I don’t particularly relate to this book, although situations that I’ve endured have changed my perspective on life, in a positive aspect, and made me unprejudiced and versatile and not so…
On the surface As I Lay Dying is about a family who are on a quest in order to lay their mother to rest in Jefferson as she have requested. However, it can be seen that putting their mother to rest plays only a small fraction of their “real” intention since they all have their own quests to complete. For instance, the real intention for Anse taking this quest is for him to be able to acquire his false teeth while Dewey Dell’s real intention is to obtain some abortion pills. Nevertheless, in a way they are still on the same quest with the same destination without them realizing. It is a quest all where the characters (and even we as readers) must journey through. It is in fact the quest of death as Addie’s father has said “The reason for living…
I Would or Would Not Recommend This Book: I would recommend this book for everyone. Although it is a very short book it has a big lesson that can be learned from…
As I Lay Dying is structured in such a way that the author has removed himself from the story. Basically, he allows his characters to tell their own story by switching between each character’s perspective. “As I Lay Dying is divided into fifty-nine sections which are described by most critics as the "interior monologue" or the "stream of consciousness" of the characters”…
I would recommend this book to anyone who needs some inspiration and motivation in their life. It is very interesting because it doesn't just focus on the author. It refers to many inspirational people who were fearless in way worse situations than what we face today. The next book I will probably end up reading is from what the website recommended me on my wall of books when I am finished with reading this…
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a novel about a series of siblings and their dying mother. Each sibling has a different view on the sense of their dying mother and even their siblings, but it tells that story through each point of view differently. These characters see themselves being a certain amount of supportive and a certain amount of helpful after their demise of their mother, Addie Bundren. You have this depiction of who they think they are versus who they really are and how the situation really is. They seem to think this journey they are partaking in, is going perfectly, when it really isn’t and the only person who sees that is Darl—and in most cases Cash as well. The question of if they ever come to a realization of this unbeautiful reality at the end of the novel. The way they are perceived throughout the novel makes one realize that they do. But, alas, it could be just the foggy glass eyed view of their understanding of reality and they don’t realize understand it to begin with.…
Overall I really enjoyed this book. Even the parts I did not like very much still caught my attention. An example of this is the section pertaining to how real estate agents may not try their very hardest to get you the best deal. Although this makes absolute sense in the simplest manner, much like everything in this book, it is not the easiest to stomach. While the real estate agents only lose a couple hundred dollars in commission, a buyer or seller can lose thousands of dollars because of an antsy real estate agent. Another example of a part that I did not like was the excerpt on the teachers cheating for their students. I was completely put off by this because in the end, the students ended up in a worse spot than where they were original. Standardized testing is put in place to make…
This is personally one of my favorite books, I don't read much but after reading this book it gives me motivation to accomplish things. There is not one part that will bore you while reading this selection. It's a great…