As I Lay Dying Reflection

Has one story ever been told twice by two different people and they both sound similar but not quite the same? In As I Lay Dying that happens consecutively. The theme of this book is, versions of reality. As I Lay Dying was written by William Faulkner in 1930. The book is narrated by 15 different characters throughout the different chapters. In the beginning Cash, the oldest of the group of children, is putting together a coffin for their dying mother Addie. Darl and Jewel, the second and third oldest, decide to make a delivery into town for their neighbor, Vernon Tull, whose wife and daughters helped mend Addie, even thought their mom was due to die soon. Shortly after they leave Addie dies. During that same time, the youngest child, Vardaman,

Addie viewed things a lot differently than how people today would even look at things. Addie was the wife of Anse and the mother to Cash, Jewel, Dewey, and Vardaman. Before she had gotten sick, she wanted to make sure that she would be buried in Jefferson with her real blood family rather than her close family which she did not exactly have a real connection with. Addie did not view life as something great, she rather viewed it as something that was just in the way of her being dead. In the beginning, Addie was a schoolteacher and almost enjoyed punishing her students. It made her feel a connection with them. From the beginning of life Addie was very lonely person and just wanted to feel a connection with something. When she finally started having kids, she became angry because her alone time had been taken away from her. She ends up wanting to have “revenge” against Anse and has an affair with Whitfield, and from that affair she had Jewel. She likes Jewel more than any of the others because he was not made by Anse. She thinks of him as one of her own. Addie viewed life in a more negative way than anyone else, and by that, she causes her family to go through a lot of negative