As I Lay Dying Essays

As I Lay Dying

The single chapter in As I Lay Dying where Moseley becomes the narrative focalizer, is anomalous because the focalizer is a character that had not yet been mentioned, and is never mentioned again. The general pattern in the novel is that each...

As I Lay Dying

One of William Faulkner's most celebrated qualities is his inventiveness. As I Lay Dying has fifteen unique narrators, one of them a dead woman, and the novel avoids traditional ideas of linear and chronological structure. Faulkner's style demands...

As I Lay Dying

One of the central thematic elements of As I Lay Dying is the distinction between fact and interpretation of fact. Clearly, any objective fact can result in a multitude of subjective interpretations because the characters all have individual...

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner uses multiple narrators in As I Lay Dying, a technique that enables him to illustrate different mindsets on events and ethical questions. Some narrators’ motivations are clear: Dewey Dell is determined to get an abortion, for...

11th Grade

As I Lay Dying

In William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, the dysfunctional Bundren family embarks on a telling journey from their farm in Yoknapatawpha County to bury their recently deceased and unmatronly matriarch, Addie. Composed of 59 sections narrated by...

11th Grade

As I Lay Dying

In accordance with the increasing influence of Modernist thought affecting American literature during the twentieth century, William Faulkner was willing to exercise more experimental narrative techniques and styles. His novel that came from this...

12th Grade

As I Lay Dying

For human beings, life inherently exists with a void, which people look to fill through indulging in various constructs set up and measured by society. Some invest themselves in money, some absolve themselves with religion, and still others...

College

As I Lay Dying

“Noah’s children had inherited the flood although they had not been there to see the deluge” (Go Down, Moses 276). This sense of doom follows through five of the major novels written by William Faulkner set in his mythic Yoknapatawpha County. Doom...

College

As I Lay Dying

Karen Russell’s modern Southern novel, Swamplandia! is informed by various works of Southern Literature through different time periods. It is through the use of themes and motifs specific to literature of the American South that Swamplandia! gets...

11th Grade

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is a novel about a family that travels to Jefferson, a town in Mississippi, to fulfill the wish of their deceased mother to be buried there. The long journey reveals the true character and motives of each family...

College

As I Lay Dying

Not only in reality, but also in the fictional world of literature, women have been silenced from time immemorial. This is the case in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a novel that details the journey of a family as they travel to bury the...

12th Grade

As I Lay Dying

It is human nature to desire a better understanding of oneself; without the magnificent powers of scientific fact, humans were forced to use the next best concepts: introspection, thought, and philosophy. Through the use of the dynamic human mind,...

College

As I Lay Dying

"My mother is a fish" is perhaps the most famous quote from William Faulkner's Southern Gothic novel, As I Lay Dying (Faulkner, 1957, p. 84). William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 in Oxford, Mississippi. The setting of As I Lay Dying, as well...

College

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying tells the story of the Bundren family when the matriarch of the family dies. Faulkner alternates perspectives between each member of the family and their neighbors. While most characters focus on their thoughts...