...Robert Bohannon Mrs. Godwin Theme analysis 3RD 2-1-12 In the story As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, the charter Anes Bundren, is very important individual throughout the story. The Bundrens are going through a tragedy which they all deal with the situation in their own way. Anes is a poor excuse for a husband towards his wife, Addie, and does not care about the responsibilities with his children. Throughout the story As I Lay Dying, it explained that Anes is a selfish, a lazy greedy man. Anse is a very selfish man. He uses the excuse of fulfilling his promise to Addie just to get to Jefferson for himself.Anse mainly ventured there to obtain false teeth. The typical husband would put dental problems lower on their priority list than any family problems. He does not even think to help Cash as he makes the coffin in the rain but merely stands in the way. At this time he also acquires a raincoat for himself and not for Cash (Faulkner 71-72). He shows his self-ways when he re-marries to a woman in Jefferson (As I Lay Dying PaRA.7). The worst part about Anse marrying another woman is that she was the woman he borrowed the shovels from. His selfish ways bring him a long way in what he believes is great fortunes. Anse may also be put in the category as lazy. An example that shows that he is lazy is when his son, Vardaman, catches a fish and he refuse to help him do anything to the fish with him (Faulkner, p.53-54). Even though he is not Vardamn’s fater, Tull shows him...
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...Addie Bundren’s love holds great power in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, as it is essential to her sons’ sense of self. Withholding affection from Darl, her second oldest son, negatively impacts his self-worth to the point of existential crisis. Conversely, Addie loves Jewel, her middle son, which leaves him a man of action, certain in his state of being. Jewel receives love from his mother, resulting in his self-assurance. The product of Addie’s affair with the local minister, Jewel is the apple of her eye. Cora Tull, the Bundren’s moralizing neighbor, recognizes Addie’s favoritism towards her illegitimate son— “Jewel, the one she labored so to bear and coddled and petted so” (21). Moreover, from Addie’s posthumous monologue, she reveals...
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...The novel, As I Lay Dying, has many conflicts. Choose one conflict in the novel and, in a well-developed essay, explore the sources of the conflict and how it contributes to the meaning of the novel as a whole. It is not the destination that matters, but the journey itself, as the proverb goes. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner explores the hectic journey of the Bundrens as they seek to bury their mother, and valuable lessons are learned along the way. The origins of their journey lead the family to understand that while each person has a different personality and some personalities cooperate better than others, such a relationship cannot be forced. In this case, death is the catalyst which forces the family to embark on their tumultuous...
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...William Faulkner published As I Lay Dying in 1930, highlighting the issues of women oppression during this time. Women were not seen as equals to men, but rather a commodity for men to use and capitalize for their own advantage. Specifically, female sexuality was used as a benefit for men which resulted in a sense obligation and even regret for women. The two female characters, Addie Bundren and her daughter Dewey Dell, represent the oppressed women and pressures that come along with female sexuality. Faulkner presents female sexuality as an obligation for women in order to critique how men exploit women. Faulkner criticizes the way advantageously men use their sexuality in order to exploit female sexuality to gain a better economic standing. For men, sex is only a means to benefit themselves. Sex is seen as obligation for women through Addie’s relationship to Anse. It is obvious that Addie does not love Anse and considers ‘love’ to be just a word. Addie is used by Anse in order to have sex, and have babies to create more work hands out in the field. Addie understands her role is to manage the house and have babies. After she has a child with the minister, she gave Anse Dewey Dell and Vardaman to “negative Jewel” (1923). Addie had an obligation to have sex with Anse and give him more children in order to make up for her sexual relationship with another man. Faulkner presents that for Anse, the betrayal was not in sleeping with another man, but by losing an opportunity with...
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...Anse as the Villain Addie Bundren in the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner has a dying wish to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi. When Addie dies her husband Anse Bundren is left to fulfill this wish along with his five children. Anse takes his children on a journey to Jefferson and during this journey he subjects his children to many catastrophes due to his carelessness and desire to get to town to carry out his own personal goals aside from burying Addie. Over the course of the novel Anse becomes the villain because of how he harms his children to carry out his own motives. Anse does not really respect Addie’s dying wish to be buried with her family in Jefferson. He travels to Jefferson to accomplish his own...
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...Analyzing Characterization In As I Lay Dying In William Faulkner’s, As I Lay Dying, characters create themselves through their narrations of the event of their Addie’s death. The novel relies on characters for narration and own character development. In a way, the characters expose themselves in the novels and the novel becomes a form of “reflective characterization.” The narrations give insight to the characters personality by the syntax, imagery, stream of consciousness they employ. Often each narrative also offers a different perspective of another character or affirms the self-characterization of another character. Darl, who narrates most of the story, seems to be the most cerebral character. Darl’s character is particularly interesting because he is indeed mad in some ways but yet he is also the healthiest and most realistic of all Bundrens. He has a strange sense of what’s going on like that of Benjamin Compsons in The Sound and the Fury. He senses Addie’s death even though he and Jewel were getting lumber at the time of her death. He also knew that Dewey Dell was pregnant and that Jewel was an illegitimate son. Dewey Dells narration also supports Darl’s psychic abilities. Like Benjamin, he has the ability to communicate without words. After going into the secret shade with Lafe, Dell realizes that Darl knows what she has done. “I saw Darl and he knew. He said he knew without the worlds like he told me that ma was going to die without words,” (page 26). In a moving scene...
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...William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying breaks the facticity of literary convention by constructing a storyline that asserts a conflict in the reader rather than predominately within the characters. The basic conflict that sets forth thematic conflict of the distinction of facts and truth within the nature of the mind is of a Southern decaying family’s attempt to bring their mother home for burial. Faulkner narrates each character’s singular point of view to show the result of the multitude of subjective interpretations as each character deals with their emotions engendered by the events. The reader is unsure as to which imitated perspective is objective towards the truth. Faulkner’s narration of imitating events from a different stand point develops an arguing conflict of what is thought to be an established nature of mind. As I Lay Dying is a conflict of the conceptual idea of truth. It can be interpreted that the conflict of the narrative is a conflict of our beings – whether or not there is such a thing as unprejudiced truth. Within the beginning narratives, the characters reveal their corruptions that will obscure their interpretations: including adultery, pregnancy, abortion, hatred, and insanity. Using multiple views promotes the isolation each family member’s internal conflicts in relation to their response to their mother’s death, relationships, and own seemingly selfish concerns. The reader begins to see the instability of their isolation when the Faulkner establishes...
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...Topic n.1 As I lay dying… is a really eccentric novel written by William Faulkner. Faulkner likes to play in his work with human stupidity and haughty. Faulkner’s ability to reveal the difficulty of the human psyche. This novel is written in 59 sections in stream of consciousness form of literary style. This unique writting style shows us the unstoppable flow of thoughts from many different narrators, in this case from Bundren’s familly members. This novel is actually all about - Bundren‘s family which is very poor and -their journey to the Jefferson, because of Addie wanted to be buried there. During the long journey happens a lot of things. Natural elements are fighting them and slowing them down, meanwhile Addie is dacaying in the coffin...
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...Within As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner illustrates different process of accepting the concept of life and death of a maternal figure within a rural setting. As I Lay Dying writes of a scenario in which Addie Bundren never stops working throughout her entire life and then one day she seems to grow tired and chooses to rest for the first time in her life. The Bundren children all have a large amount of varying reactions towards her death and her life before her death. Cash Bundren works to complete the coffin before his mother’s death, and after her death, a Vardaman Bundren does not agree with his mother being in the coffin which leads him to bore holes in the lid of her coffin. Darl and Jewel are both alerted at their return home of their...
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...The novel As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner takes place in the years following the Civil War in the South, specifically the 1920s. Following the freedom of slaves, a new economic gap was created in American society, requiring people to do the laborious work previously done by slaves. With this gap, a new economic system of farming grew the fill the gap –sharecropping. Although marketed in a different way, sharecropping utilized unfair practices and caused heavy debt for the farmers, creating a cycle of poverty. In the novel, the Bundrens fall victim to the consequences of sharecropping and are riddled by poverty. Because of this poverty, Faulkner consistently emphasizes the notion that the Bundrens are dissociated from society due to their...
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...Despite the fact that Addie Bundren in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying only has a short chapter in the novel her character proves to be very complex to understand. Regardless of the fact that she is the cause for the series of events that occur it is easy to overlook the corpse of a character that is hauled around for over half of the novel. Perhaps, Faulkner’s choice to grant his audience limited access to background information on the main character is because he actually shows us her past rather than tells us. He does so through Dewey Dell, who is also over shadowed by the presence of the male dominant characters. This offers a different perspective on the complicated life of Dewey Dell while shedding a new light on the thoughts of Addie...
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