The suffering and pain a person can cause impacts others on an intense magnitude. Even when people cease to exists, they provoke extreme emotions and cause disorder as if they are still alive through memories and surroundings. In the novels, The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, Faulkner symbolizes the constant internal presence of Addie Bundren and Caddy Compson despite Addie’s death and Caddie’s sacrifices as their disappearances disrupt normality.
Even after death, Addie is able to “exists” through the connections of an animal. After learning that Addie wishes to be buried in Jefferson with her ancestors, the Bundren family embarks on a journey to fulfill her dying wish. The youngest child of Addie, Vardaman is stunned at the death of her mother. At first, he refuses to accept the fact that she is dead. “It was not her. I was there, looking. I saw. I thought it was her, but it was not. It was
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He fails to comprehend the nature of death and to cope with the loss, he thinks “through a complex, although seemingly hysterical, line of reasoning that finally leads him to identify his mother with a large fish he had caught earlier in the day” (Ellis 408). He begins to visualize the image of his mother with the fish he cut up into little pieces. He recognizes that there was a time when the fish became a “not-fish” (Faulkner 1930, 53). He equates this with his dead mother as there was a time when she was alive and now she is not. Coming to this realization he concludes, “My mother is a fish” (Faulkner 1930, 84). Vardaman’s assertion is symbolic because he is giving his mother a new way to exists so she can be alive again. He is unable to differentiate between his dead mother and the dead fish because to him, his mother and the fish have become one soul; his mother
In the book Literature by Edgar V Roberts, Faulkner begins the story “A Rose for Emily” with an extremely long sentence which shows the communities reaction to death and immediately displays a scene through gender differences:
Addie Bundren conjures up the central darkness derived from her death and directly or indirectly causes actions in which each Bundren character takes advantage of Addie. With the character's actions revolving around her death, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying reveals the truth about the people who surround a person may take advantage of him or her. The death of Addie Bundren shapes all of the character's actions in life including Addie's final request before her death. Addie takes advantage of her death by using it for revenge and inflicting final pains upon some characters, while the other characters use her to get what they want for their personal needs.
William Faulkner in his book, As I Lay Dying, portrays a Mississippi family which goes through many hardships and struggles. Faulkner uses imagery to illustrate an array of central themes such as the conscious being or existence and poverty among many others. From the first monologue, you will find an indulgence of sensual appeal, a strong aspect of the novel. Each character grows stronger and stronger each passage. One of the themes in As I Lay Dying is a human's relations to nature. Faulkner uses imagery to produce a sense of relation between animals and humans.
Plot: The matriarch of a poverty-stricken southern family, Addie Bundren, dies in her bed. Married to Anse Bundren, she has five children: Jewel, Cash, Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman Bundren. Her neighbors, Vernon and Cora Tull (as well as their children), care for Addie in her final days as her family keeps the house running. Cash, the oldest, spends most of his time building a coffin for his mother right underneath her window. The second oldest child, Darl, and the youngest, Vardaman, just try to survive during the time of the book.
“As I Lay Dying, read as the dramatic confrontation of words and actions, presents Faulkner’s allegory of the limits of talent” (Jacobi). William Faulkner uses many different themes that make this novel a great book. Faulkner shows his talent by uses different scenarios, which makes the book not only comedic but informational on the human mind. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a great book that illustrates great themes and examples. Faulkner illustrates different character and theme dynamics throughout the entire novel, which makes the book a humorous yet emotional roller coaster. Faulkner illustrates the sense of identity, alienation, and the results of physical and mental death to show what he thinks of the human mind.
He shows no meaningful emotion about his mother’s death or the fact that she compared him to such a high being. Jewel’s segment is quick and does not provide the audience with too much insight or lie detector analysis. This correctly portrays Jewel’s mysterious sense because Faulkner also chooses to have most of Jewel’s character development narrated through another character’s point of view. The sense of mystery surrounds Jewel because it is left for the reader to determine if he is a Christ figure like Addie as claims “he is my cross and he will be my salvation. He will save me from the water and from the fire. Even though I have laid down my life, he will save me,” (Faulkner, 168). Ironically, in death, Jewel is Addie’s savior in both the ways she predicted. When the family is crossing the river after the flood, Jewel helps retrieve the coffin from the water. When Darl sets the barn on fire, Jewel runs in to the fire to save the coffin. Addie’s greatest sin ends up being her savior after she has laid down her life. However, parallel to this, North claims that Faulkner intends for Jewel to be an inverted Christ figure, he believes “instead of a divine birth, Jewel is born illegitimate. He is also, ironically, born of a “holy” father. He is by far the angriest character in the book, and his
Toni Morrison’s Beloved tells a story of a loving mother and ex-slave who takes drastic measures to protect her children which later affect her entire life. In contrast, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying goes through the life of the Bundren’s after their mother passes away and their journey to get her coffin to Jefferson. The bond between a mother and her children is chronicled in these novels. Both Faulkner and Morrison explain how the influence of a mother can affect how a child grows and matures through her love and actions.
Faulkner, William. As I lay Dying. First Vintage International Edition. Toronto, Canada: Random House of Canada Limited, 1990. Print.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. 1930. Edited by Noel Polk. New York: Vintage, 1985. Print.
Addie Bundren of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying has often been characterized as an unnatural, loveless, cold mother whose demands drive her family on a miserable trek to bury her body in Jefferson. For a feminist understanding of Addie, we have to move outside the traditional patriarchal definitions of "womanhood" or "motherhood" that demand selflessness from others, blame mothers for all familial dysfunction, and only lead to negative readings of Addie. She also has been characterized as yet another Faulkner character who is unable to express herself using language. This modernist view of the inexpressiblility of the creative spirit does not apply to Addie simply because she is not an artist; she is a woman and a mother, a person who feminist theorists would desribe as "traditionally mute." To characterize her using universalizing, humanist terms erases the way that her character is marked by her biological sex and by the gender roles she is forced to play. Addie is not a representative of humankind, or even of womankind, but an individual woman trapped in a partriarchal world that represses her desires and silences her; a woman who longs to find an identity of her own that is outside patriarchal constructions and not always definable in relation to the men and the children in her life. Most importantly, Addie is a character who is acutely aware of the linguistic and social oppression that traps her into a life she does not want.
little house an' a room to ourself. Little iron stove, an' in the winter we'd keep a
William Faulkner takes us back in time with his Gothic short story known as, “A Rose for Emily.” Almost every sentence gives a new piece of evidence to lead the reader to the overall theme of death, isolation, and trying to maintain traditions. The reader can conclude the theme through William Faulkner’s use of literary devices such as his choice of characters, the setting, the diction, the tone, and the plot line.
William Faulkner uses multiple narrators throughout The Sound and the Fury to depict the life of Caddy Compson without telling the story from her point-of-view. Benjy, a mentally disabled 33 year old, Quentin, a troubled and suicidal Harvard student, and Jason, a racist and greedy man, each give their drastically different sides of Caddy’s story to create an incomplete chronicle of her life. Faulkner’s first chapter explores Caddy’s life through the silent narrator Benjy. As a result of Benjy’s inability to talk, much of how he describes the world is through his heightened sensory awareness. Benjy constantly repeats the fact that, which, to Benjy, symbolizes Caddy’s innocence (Faulkner 6). Later in the novel when, Benjy realizes that Caddy has lost the innocence Benjy once idolized and loved (Faulkner 40).
In As I Lay Dying the Bundren family faces many hardships dealing with death and physical nature. Nature plays a major role in moving Faulkner’s story. Nature takes a toll on the family in their time of despair of losing a loved one. They are challenged by human nature and the nature of the elements. Throughout the story the family overcomes the human nature of emotions and the nature of the weather. They face nature in the most peculiar ways, like a flood that keeps them from crossing, the decaying body of Addie, and how they all grieve over the death of Addie; Dewey Dell said, “I heard that my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had” (Faulkner 110). The forces of nature compete with the Burden family.
The family matriarch, Addie Bundren, dies early in the novel. The rest of the story is based on her family- her husband, Anse, and their five children: Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman, and their attempt to fulfill her wish of being buried in Jefferson. They must transport her coffin on a wagon across the county, a trip which takes a total of ten days. They encounter many obstacles during their journey, all while trying to deal with the death of their recently-passed mother. While the whole family goes to Jefferson for varying motivations, it seems that Jewel is the driving force of the journey, which Darl does everything in his power to sabotage.