Who Is Dewey Bundren In As I Lay Dying

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William Faulkner won the nobel prize for his novel, As I Lay Dying, Faulkner uses fifteen different characters to narrate and allow the reader to analyze each of their point of views. Through the confessions of each character, the reader is able to form their opinion about different characters and issues, without being directly told by the author what each character was thinking or feeling, the novel is open to quite a bit of interpretation by the reader. Since some of the narrators are unreliable for different reasons, it can be difficult and confusing to follow the story or interpret things at times. One character that is easily understood is Dewey Dell Bundren. She is the fourth child and only daughter of Anse and Addie Bundren and ends up being the only female in her family once her mother dies. As I Lay Dying is the story of a …show more content…

Along their journey to bury their mother, the characters, like Dewey Dell, seem to evolve through their encounters, thoughts, and experiences.
Dewey Dell Bundren represents the most naive character in As I Lay Dying. Different characters in the story take advantage of her naivete and use it to their own selfish desires. Even when these situations are painfully obvious to us as the reader, Dewey Dell never seems to know when she is being taken advantage of. Unfortunately, many of the times that Dewey Dell is manipulated and used are for sexual reasons. She was tricked into engaging in sexual intercourse and became pregnant. The father of this child knew that he was taking advantage of the young and inexperienced Dewey Dell and then just giving her ten dollars to get an abortion, he had nothing to do with her after that. In the middle of the novel, Dewey Dell talks about a dream she had

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