James L Roberts - CliffsNotes on Faulkners As I Lay Dying

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As I Lay Dying is told in individual sections, so that the narration of the story shifts from one character to another. While most sections are narrated by members of the Bundren family, the few that are told by neighbors and other observers offer a glimpse of the family from an outsiders perspective. Each narratorfamily members and outsiders alikeis believable but at the same time unreliable, forcing readers to decide for themselves what is reality and what is not.

As the novel begins, Addie Bundren lays dying in her bedroom while her son Cash builds her coffin. Addies ineffectual husband, Anse, is arranging to have her buried in Jefferson, a town forty miles away, because Addie has requested this last wish. Anses motivating reason to go to Jefferson, however, is to get fitted for new teeth and, if possible, find a new wife. Two other sons, Darl and Jewel, struggle both with their mothers death and their own mental health. Darl is perceptive and insightful but taunts others mercilessly, while Jewel knows how to express love and affection only through violence, because his mother sought violence when she conceived him during an affair with a preacher.

Daughter Dewey Dell, a simple young woman who is incapable of forming deep, logically sequenced thoughts, is pregnant and in a hurry to get to Jefferson for an abortion. The youngest child in the Bundren family, Vardaman, is either much younger than his siblings or is mentally retarded; throughout the novel, he confuses his mother with the fish he catches on the day she dies.

To adhere to Addies wishes, the family travels the distance to Jefferson during a hot, wet spell in Mississippi, and throughout the journey, Addies body proceeds to decay, while buzzards swirl menacingly overhead. When they discover that a bridge has washed out, the family must find a way to get Addies coffin over the river, and the ensuing scenes are both tragic and comic.

When these events become too horrific for Darl and he comes to understands that his mother needs to be buried properly, he tries to burn his mothers body and coffin in a barn, an act for which he is declared mentally insane. His father, Anse, allows Darl to be sent to an insane asylum because he does not want to reimburse the family for their barn, which was destroyed by the fire. Jewel, meanwhile, saves his mothers body from the fire, just as he saved her coffin from the swollen river, thus fulfilling his mothers prophecy that Jewel would save her.

In its broadest terms, the structure of As I Lay Dying revolves around the preparations for and the actual journey from the Bundren farm to a town forty miles away in order to bury Addie Bundren. During the journey, several difficulties are encountered. So, in one sense, the novel has a linear structure based upon the movement of the funeral procession traversing the forty miles from the Bundren farm to Jefferson. But the novel is also structured in such a way that the author has virtually removed himself from the story. He allows his characters to tell their own story. Accordingly, each of the fifty-nine sections is narrated by some character in the novel. Even though there are several important narrators who are not Bundrens, the largest number of the sections is presented by one or the other of the Bundrens.

By using a different narrator for each section, Faulkner accomplishes many things. First, he allows or forces the reader to participate in the story. Since Faulkner has removed himself from the story, that is, since he doesn't use a straight narrative technique to explain certain aspects, we must enter more directly into the story and determine for ourselves the exact nature of each relationship or the significance of any particular event.

Second, the technique allows us to know the inner thoughts of all the characters. We see into the mind of each character directly and must analyze what we find there. Faulkner, as author, has not told us anything about the charactershe has simply presented them and we must examine their inner thoughts and determine for ourselves what types of characters they are.

Third, we are able to see each event from multiple perspectives. For example, when the coffin is lost in the river, we have several narrations which allow us to see the same event from many different vantage points. Darl gives his narration of the loss of the coffin; from Vardaman, we hear of his mother being a fish swimming in the river; from Cash, we hear that the coffin wasnt on a balance; and from Anse, we hear that this is just one more burden we must endure before he can get his false teeth.

Therefore, with the multiple narration of each event, we see that event from many angles and observe what type of emphasis each character puts on that event; by this technique, we learn more about the character. Thus, in general, the structure of the novel allows us to become a part of the narration by drawing us more intimately into the novel.

But Faulkner has also included some narrators who are not Bundrens. These narrators help to bring a touch of objectivity to the novel. Without the outside narrators, we might become too involved in the unusual Bundren world. Faulkner is therefore careful to include outside narrators so as to remind us that the Bundrens are not typical people. For example, if the story were confined solely to the Bundrens, we might not realize that this dead body stinks so badly and that the Bundrens are violating all sense of decency by carting the body over the countryside. Thus, the outside narrators give us a touch of the real world by which we can measure our reactions to the Bundrens.

Therefore, if a central problem of the novel involved the reasons for Addies request to be buried and why her family defy fire and water to fulfill it, then the structure of the novel forces the reader to solve these problems by analyzing each character.