As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner was born in 1897 to a southern family is Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner has written a substantial amount of short stories and novels from his little farm in Oxford. As I Lay Dying, a novel by Faulkner has received much praise and was ranked in 1992 as one of the top hundred novels of the twentieth century. As I lay Dying is a novel which takes place in the early to late 1920's in the small imaginary county of Yoknapatawpha. Faulkner directs the readers eyes to a very southern town where the terrain is very rough and so are the times. The novel takes us to Faulkners imaginary town where a maiden by the name of Addie Bundren is dying in her bed. Addie who is married to a lazy greedy man by the name of Anse wants to buried in Jefferson, "where her people are from." Once Addie dies the plot of the story comes along as the family of six goes to put Addie to rest. As the plot thickens the reader becomes involved in a unique writing style which explores every characters thoughts and feelings. Each chapter there is a new character telling there side and this is when the whole story comes out. The novel takes the reader through a journey once Addie dies that explores many different themes. Grievin
In Faulkners novel I couldn't really define that a man was writing. Maybe the only thing that did stand out was that the males seemed to serve a more dominant roll in the novel. Addie was dead and Dewey Dell was helpless and pregnant. Also another aspect might be that there are only three females in the novel Dewey Dell, Addie, and Cora. Besides that when a female would be that narrator for the chapter it was if she was really telling it how it was. This was the first time I read a William Faulkner novel and it caught me as very confusing and hard to interpret. The novel was awkward in the sense that the whole time I was reading it I knew there were underlying themes that I wasn't grasping. I think As I lay Dying is a decent novel but I can't honestly say it impacted me. The one aspect of the novel that did interest me was the way that Faulkner used different characters to tell different parts of the story. That was creative and kept me involved. Also Darls character was intriguing in how he was always the one who knew everything about everyone. The thing I saw as ironic was how at the end Darl was put in the mental institution when he was the one who seemed the most sane to me. As I Lay Dying was a very confusing novel for me and I will most likely read it again due to the fact I don't think I got everything. The plot was good and the characters were very intriguing but something tells me that there is more to the story then I have discovered. People have told me that Faulkner is a different kind of author and is somewhat hard to understand. I have heard that his other books have similar characters and historical meanings. If there was another novel that I would consider better it would have to be A Lesson Before Dying. I haven't read a lot of novels but A Lesson Before Dying was definitely one of the best books I have read due to the plot and overall just excellent writing. While the journey to bury Addie
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1303
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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