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A review by thaurisil
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
4.0
Addie Bundren dies and her family transports her body across Mississippi to Jefferson to bury her with her ancestors as per her wishes.
This family comprises:
- Anse, the bumbling foolish father, who wants to go to Jefferson to make denture. He selfishly steals from his children to obtain the money needed to finally bury Addie. He refuses people's offers of charity claiming he wishes to "be beholden to no man", thus causing his children suffering.
- Cash, the oldest son, a carpenter who makes Addie's coffin. He fractures his leg when the family crosses a flooded-out bridge and is transported on top of the coffin. The family foolishly tries to stabilise his leg with cement and causes even more damage.
- Darl, the second oldest son and the most introspective. As Addie's body rots, he tries to give her a proper send off by burning the barn in which her coffin lies, and is sent to an asylum.
- Jewel, the middle child and an illegitimate child of the preacher Whitfield. He has a violent love for both his horse and his mother. He allows Anse to trade his horse for mules so that the family can complete the journey.
- Dewey Dell, the simple-minded daughter who is pregnant and secretly seeks an abortion. Darl knows her secret and she takes revenge on him by instigating his commitment to the asylum.
- Vardaman, who is either a young child or a intellectually disabled adolescent.
The family encounters multiple difficulties in the journey, and a synopsis of the plot is here.
Each short chapter is narrated by a different person. The different voices drive the narrative forward, but they also overlap, showing us different perspectives of the same event. Darl's voice is the most reflective and insightful, and he narrates many of the important chapters such as Addie's death, the loss and recovery of the coffin in the river, and the trading of Jewel's horse. Apart from Darl, the rest of the Bundren family is made up of oddballs. Anse is hypocritical and makes excuses, such as refusing to work because he once fell sick from the heat when he was young. Cash is extremely task-oriented, and the making of the coffin is for him more about the carpentry than about his mother. The first chapter he narrates is simply a checklist of how a coffin is made. Jewel is silent. He is unable to express his feelings, including his love for his mother, except in violence, and he only narrates one chapter. Dewey Dell is naive and dim-witted, with an animal-like single-minded desire to obtain the abortion and get revenge on Darl for discovering her secret. Vardaman is mentally incapable of understanding his mother's death, and he equates his mother to a fish that he catches and chops up early in the novel as a way of understanding death.
These views into the strange minds of the Bundrens are complemented by the perspectives of outsiders. These include Vernon and Cora Tull, their neighbours, Peabody, the doctor, Whitfield, Jewel's biological father, and Moseley and MacGowan, two druggists, the first of whom refuses to help Dewey Dell obtain her abortion, and the second of whom pretends to help Dewey Dell to cheat her of her money. These outsiders show us how the Bundrens appear to the outside world, for example showing that Anse's hypocrisy fools nobody, or that Addie's body, which started the journey three days late and decomposes even faster in the river, smells putrid.
Of the characters, I disliked Anse the most. He starts off seeming like just a bumbling fool, but by the end of the novel, he has stolen Jewel's horse, Cash's money that he intended to use to buy a gramophone, and Dewey Dell's money that she wanted to use to get an abortion, and committed Darl to an asylum to avoid being sued for burning down a barn. He says throughout the novel that he is going to Jefferson to fulfil a promise to Addie, but he goes there only to buy dentures so that he can eat foods that he likes, and then ends the novel getting a new wife.
Jewel was my favourite character. We hear his voice only once and he is violent and foul-mouthed, but he, along with Darl, are the only ones who really love Addie. He does not know how to express himself verbally, and so his love is expressed in violence, including violent actions towards his horse. He is impulsive and makes some reckless, thoughtless actions, but he also literally saves Addie's coffin from water and fire. He is a troubled teen with a passionate love who struggles being understood, and I felt sympathetic towards him.
Darl is the smartest of the Bundrens, and it is ironic that he is confined to the asylum. As he goes to the asylum, he laughs uncontrollably, and while this is viewed by everyone else as insanity, Cash wonders if he is truly insane. He is perhaps laughing at the absurdity of the family and the circumstances, and is rejoicing that he is fortunate enough to escape from the family.
This is a strange, darkly comic book. Faulkner shifts effortlessly from voice to voice, all in stream-of-consciousness style, and builds eccentric characters with often illogical thoughts who yet manage to narrate a coherent narrative.
This family comprises:
- Anse, the bumbling foolish father, who wants to go to Jefferson to make denture. He selfishly steals from his children to obtain the money needed to finally bury Addie. He refuses people's offers of charity claiming he wishes to "be beholden to no man", thus causing his children suffering.
- Cash, the oldest son, a carpenter who makes Addie's coffin. He fractures his leg when the family crosses a flooded-out bridge and is transported on top of the coffin. The family foolishly tries to stabilise his leg with cement and causes even more damage.
- Darl, the second oldest son and the most introspective. As Addie's body rots, he tries to give her a proper send off by burning the barn in which her coffin lies, and is sent to an asylum.
- Jewel, the middle child and an illegitimate child of the preacher Whitfield. He has a violent love for both his horse and his mother. He allows Anse to trade his horse for mules so that the family can complete the journey.
- Dewey Dell, the simple-minded daughter who is pregnant and secretly seeks an abortion. Darl knows her secret and she takes revenge on him by instigating his commitment to the asylum.
- Vardaman, who is either a young child or a intellectually disabled adolescent.
The family encounters multiple difficulties in the journey, and a synopsis of the plot is here.
Each short chapter is narrated by a different person. The different voices drive the narrative forward, but they also overlap, showing us different perspectives of the same event. Darl's voice is the most reflective and insightful, and he narrates many of the important chapters such as Addie's death, the loss and recovery of the coffin in the river, and the trading of Jewel's horse. Apart from Darl, the rest of the Bundren family is made up of oddballs. Anse is hypocritical and makes excuses, such as refusing to work because he once fell sick from the heat when he was young. Cash is extremely task-oriented, and the making of the coffin is for him more about the carpentry than about his mother. The first chapter he narrates is simply a checklist of how a coffin is made. Jewel is silent. He is unable to express his feelings, including his love for his mother, except in violence, and he only narrates one chapter. Dewey Dell is naive and dim-witted, with an animal-like single-minded desire to obtain the abortion and get revenge on Darl for discovering her secret. Vardaman is mentally incapable of understanding his mother's death, and he equates his mother to a fish that he catches and chops up early in the novel as a way of understanding death.
These views into the strange minds of the Bundrens are complemented by the perspectives of outsiders. These include Vernon and Cora Tull, their neighbours, Peabody, the doctor, Whitfield, Jewel's biological father, and Moseley and MacGowan, two druggists, the first of whom refuses to help Dewey Dell obtain her abortion, and the second of whom pretends to help Dewey Dell to cheat her of her money. These outsiders show us how the Bundrens appear to the outside world, for example showing that Anse's hypocrisy fools nobody, or that Addie's body, which started the journey three days late and decomposes even faster in the river, smells putrid.
Of the characters, I disliked Anse the most. He starts off seeming like just a bumbling fool, but by the end of the novel, he has stolen Jewel's horse, Cash's money that he intended to use to buy a gramophone, and Dewey Dell's money that she wanted to use to get an abortion, and committed Darl to an asylum to avoid being sued for burning down a barn. He says throughout the novel that he is going to Jefferson to fulfil a promise to Addie, but he goes there only to buy dentures so that he can eat foods that he likes, and then ends the novel getting a new wife.
Jewel was my favourite character. We hear his voice only once and he is violent and foul-mouthed, but he, along with Darl, are the only ones who really love Addie. He does not know how to express himself verbally, and so his love is expressed in violence, including violent actions towards his horse. He is impulsive and makes some reckless, thoughtless actions, but he also literally saves Addie's coffin from water and fire. He is a troubled teen with a passionate love who struggles being understood, and I felt sympathetic towards him.
Darl is the smartest of the Bundrens, and it is ironic that he is confined to the asylum. As he goes to the asylum, he laughs uncontrollably, and while this is viewed by everyone else as insanity, Cash wonders if he is truly insane. He is perhaps laughing at the absurdity of the family and the circumstances, and is rejoicing that he is fortunate enough to escape from the family.
This is a strange, darkly comic book. Faulkner shifts effortlessly from voice to voice, all in stream-of-consciousness style, and builds eccentric characters with often illogical thoughts who yet manage to narrate a coherent narrative.