As I Lay Dying Analysis

In As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren, a matriarch of a poor southern family, is very ill and is expected to die soon. Her one dying wish was to be buried in the town of Jefferson. Once Addie dies, the family travels a long way in a beat up wagon, carrying Addie in her coffin. When a sudden flood occurs, all of the nearby bridges get washed away so they are forced to go across the river with the wagon. While doing so, the coffin slides out of the wagon, and Jewel, one of Addie's children, risks his life to go save the coffin, soon retrieving it. Addie and her husband, Anse, never had a very loving relationship. Addie cheated on Anse with a local priest, and had a child with him. However, Anse never knew about this affair. After Addie died, Anse found a new wife while he was at a store picking out a shovel to bury Addie with.

One theme is learning to deal with death. People deal with death in many different ways, and it shows in this story. Anse took Addie's death rather well, which shows that they didn't have a very loving marriage. Most of the children, however, mourned the death of their mother greatly. Some children weren't as sad as others because their mother had been sick for a while and they knew she was going to die. One son was always crying because he and his mother were very close. But one child, Dewey, became pregnant about a month before her mother died. While everyone was trying to set up the funeral for Addie, Dewey was stopping at every store possible to try and find a drug that would abort her baby. She had so much anxiety worrying about this baby that she didn't have time to mourn the death of her