As I Lay Dying is told in individual sections, so that the narration of the story shifts from one character to another. While most sections are narrated by members of the Bundren family, the few that are told by neighbors and other observers offer a glimpse of the family from an outsider’s perspective. Each narrator—family members and outsiders alike—is believable but at the same time unreliable, forcing readers to decide for themselves what is reality and what is not. Addie Bundren, the wife of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor southern family, is very ill, and is expected to die soon. Her oldest son, Cash, puts all of his carpentry skills into preparing her coffin, which he builds right in front of Addie’s bedroom window. Although Addie’s health is failing rapidly, two of her other sons, Darl and Jewel, leave town to make a delivery for the Bundrens’ neighbor, Vernon Tull, whose wife and two daughters have been tending to Addie. Shortly after Darl and Jewel leave, Addie dies. The youngest Bundren child, Vardaman, associates his mother’s death with that of a fish he caught and cleaned earlier that day. With some help, Cash completes the coffin just before dawn. Vardaman is troubled by the fact that his mother is nailed shut inside a box, and while the others sleep, he bores holes in the lid, two of which go through his mother’s face. Addie and Anse’s daughter, Dewey Dell, whose recent sexual liaisons with a local farmhand named Lafe have left her pregnant, is so overwhelmed by anxiety over her condition that she barely mourns her mother’s death. A funeral service is held on the following day, where the women sing songs inside the Bundren house while the men stand outside on the porch talking to each other. Darl, who narrates much of this first section, returns with Jewel a few days later, and the presence of buzzards over their house lets them know their mother is dead. On seeing this sign, Darl sardonically reassures Jewel, who is widely perceived as ungrateful and uncaring, that he can be sure his beloved horse is not dead. Addie has made Anse promise that she will be buried in the town of Jefferson, and though this request is a far more complicated proposition than burying her at home, Anse’s sense of obligation, combined with his desire to buy a set of false teeth, compels him to fulfill Addie’s dying wish.
“God’s will be done, now I can get teeth,” Anse says after Addie’s death. To some people, it may seem weird that someone wants new teeth, and to others, it might make them wonder if he’s sad about his wife’s death. Anse Bundren, a middle-aged man, has a reputation of being a lazy and selfish person. But how does that play a role in As I Lay Dying? How has Anse’s relationship with his family, his wife, and himself affect the outcome of the story? Another thing about Anse is his view of Addie’s death. How has Anse Bundren become dead in the story, but is really still alive?
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.
He is opposed to the family sitting by the bed and watching Addie die and cash sawing away at Anse's coffin. But at the same time, he tells Darl to shut up when Darl raises an objection to the three-dollar trip Addie tells them to make. Imagery is an integral part of any narrative. The multiple narratives and cross observations made in As I Lay Dying are complex and they consist of many spectrums. Imagery alone can be sufficient to give the reader a rich sense of emotion, but when it symbolizes the themes of the story and reflects on the characteristics of the narrator, it is truly a masterpiece.
Plot: The matriarch of a poverty stricken southern family, Addie Bundren, lays dying in her bed. Married to Anse Bundren, she births 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. Dewey Dell, the only daughter in the family, becomes pregnant and acts as if she does not care about the death of her mother, only the abortion of her bastard child. Jewel, known as Addie’s favorite child,
Eventhough As I lay Dying is a story revolved around the death of a mother, Addie Bundren, the true content of the story develops from information given to the audience through a multitude of narrators. The relationship between each family member and their association with Addie's death differentiates from person to person. Through her husband, Anse, we are introduced to his philosophy that man should keep stationary. Anse explains, "The lord put roads for travelling; why he laid them down flat on the Earth. When he aims for something to be always a-moving, he makes it long ways, like a road or a horse or a wagon, but when he aims for something to stay put, He makes it up and down ways, like a tree or a man" (24). In comparing a tree to a man, Anse feels that eventhough alive, man was not created to move about. This idea exhibits a lack of suspense within Anse, which may or may not have been Annie's desire to have an affair which lead to the birth of her child Jewel. Interestingly, Anse contradicts his own beliefs to fullfill his wife's wishes to be layed to rest next to her own family. This act can also be seen as selfish when Anse really desires a new set of teeth.
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
Go Down Moses by William Faulkner is an artful collection of short stories that connect in a biblical fashion to create a coherent novel. Within each story Faulkner beautifully illustrates the tensions arising from man’s struggle to overcome the curse of Adam, and how that biblical narrative plays out in the South. A complex family tree plagued by sin and encompassing two “races” with a heavily mixed bloodline slowly unfolds from chapter to chapter. In nearly every story, the black characters are juxtaposed against their white counterparts, neither race can be understood without the presence of their opposite. Faulkner uses this set up to repeatedly contrast the black slave community’s humanity and capacity to love, against the white community’s refusal to treat them as more than heartless pieces of property. Rider, Eunice, and Molly Beachem are all outstanding pictures of the true humanity and compassion of the black community. While the Sheriff, Old McCauslin, Roth Edmonds, and Ike demonstrate the white man’s inability to see these qualities in blacks, and the sin that results from this blindness.
As I lay Dying’s characters, Jewel and Darl in particular, are largely influenced by their mother’s unequal treatment of them. The personalities of the boys may seem as if they are purely natural, however research suggest that Addie’s favoritism may have played the biggest part in the development of the boys’ personality. An article published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, titled Mothers’ Differentiation and Depressive Symptoms Among Adult Children, discuses the results of favoriting children on both the preferred and unpreferred children. These effects are easily seen in Jewel, the preferred child, and Darl, the unpreferred child.
Jewel, Addie's son by Whitfield, is 18 years old. Like Pearl, the product of Hester Prynne's adulterous affair in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, Jewel's name is a symbol of the value his mother places on him. The favoritism that Addie showed him is responsible for the antagonism between him and Darl. Jewel personifies Addie's preference for experience over words. He is always in motion. He expresses himself best through actions. When he verbalizes his love for Addie- in his single monologue- he does so with a violent fantasy about hurling down stones on outsiders. Elsewhere, he expresses his love for her through deeds, not words.
When Death stops for the speaker, he reins a horse-drawn carriage as they ride to her grave. This carriage symbolizes a hearse of which carries her coffin to her grave a day or two after her death. As they ride, they pass, “the School… / the Fields of Gazing Grain— / [and] the Setting Sun—” (lines 9-12). These three symbolize the speakers life, from childhood in the playgrounds, to labor in the fields, and finally to the setting sun of her life. When the speaker and Death arrive at the house, it is night.
As the novel begins, Janie walks into her former hometown quietly and bravely. She is not the same woman who left; she is not afraid of judgment or envy. Full of “self-revelation”, she begins telling her tale to her best friend, Phoeby, by looking back at her former self with the kind of wistfulness everyone expresses when they remember a time of childlike naïveté. She tries to express her wonderment and innocence by describing a blossoming peach tree that she loved, and in doing so also reveals her blossoming sexuality. To deter Janie from any trouble she might find herself in, she was made to marry an older man named Logan Killicks at the age of 16. In her naïveté, she expected to feel love eventually for this man. Instead, however, his love for her fades and she beco...
Light in August, a novel written by the well-known author, William Faulkner, can definitely be interpreted in many ways. However, one fairly obvious prospective is through a religious standpoint. It is difficult, nearly impossible, to construe Light in August without noting the Christian parallels. Faulkner gives us proof that a Christian symbolic interpretation is valid. Certain facts of these parallels are inescapable and there are many guideposts to this idea.
In conclusion, the tenuous relationship Sethe shared with her mother led to Sethe’s inability to provide for her children. Consequentially, the murder of Beloved built an emotional barrier that added to the preexisting issue of concerning her stolen milk left Denver with too little milk and the primitive drive to live that at first seemed foiled by her mother’s overbearing past. Yet, against all odds Denver was able to break her family’s legacy of being engulfed in the past and began taking steps for a better future.
Although “The Grave” seems to be about two children playing in their grandfather’s grave, it is actually about the realization of gender roles, coming of age, and mortality. Katherine Anne Porter wanted the reader to look beneath the surface of the story to find the many different underlying meanings. The main character Miranda is faced with the cold hard truth that life isn’t always sweet and pleasant as she watches her brother kill and skin a pregnant rabbit.
In John Donne’s sonnet “Death, Be Not Proud” death is closely examined and Donne writes about his views on death and his belief that people should not live in fear of death, but embrace it. “Death, Be Not Proud” is a Shakespearean sonnet that consists of three quatrains and one concluding couplet, of which I individually analyzed each quatrain and the couplet to elucidate Donne’s arguments with death. Donne converses with death, and argues that death is not the universal destroyer of life. He elaborates on the conflict with death in each quatrain through the use of imagery, figurative language, and structure. These elements not only increase the power of Donne’s message, but also symbolize the meaning of hope of eternal life as the ultimate escape to death.