As I Lay Dying

Maple Spring Publishing

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is consistently ranked among the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Set in Faulkners fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the book tells of the hapless and tormented Bundren family. Addie, the longsuffering matriarch, is lying on her deathbed, tended by her daughter, Dewey Dell. Outside, her son Cash is crafting the coffin she will soon need. The novel tells not only of Addies death but of the familys arduous trek thirty miles away to bury her among her ancestors in accordance with her wishes. The journey, by wagon, takes them over a flooding bridge, where the coffin containing Addies unembalmed body is nearly washed away. Faulkner, telling the story through the stereoscopic view of fifteen different characters, paints a starkly beautiful portrait not only of a familys confrontation with death but their twisted and ambivalent relations with one another Anse, the shiftless and selfish father the oldest son, Darl, tormented by love for a mother that is not reciprocated the second son, Jewel, favored by Addie but who does not love her Dewey Dell, the pregnant unwed teen and the youngest, Vardaman, who views the panoply with the naive but acute perception of a little boy. The title comes froma line in HomersOdysseythat is spoken byAgamemnonin the underworld "As I lay dying, the woman with the dogs eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades."Published in 1930, As I Lay Dying marks the beginning of Faulkners mature... | William Faulkner As I Lay Dying Paperback Book