As I Lay Dying (1930) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

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• Addie Bundren: The Bundren family's dead wife and mother who is taken to be buried in Jefferson. She is the wife of Anse and the mother of Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman.
• Anse Bundren: Widowed husband of Addie.
• Cash Bundren: A skilled carpenter. He functions like a mechanical device.
• Darl Bundren: The second oldest child. One of the narrator of the story. He narrates 19 of 59 chapters. He is insane.
• Jewel Bundren: Addie's third child.
• Dewey Dell Bundren: Anse and Addie's only daughter.
• Vardaman Bundren: The youngest child, also pretty much insane. He was supposed to represent a politician of that day who did not have commonsense.
• Vernon Tull: A "Friend" of the Bundrens, more of a toll used by the Bundrens.
• Cora Tull: Wife of Vernon Tull, very religious.
• Peabody: Bundren's doctor; he narrates two chapters of the book
• Lafe: Dewey Dell's secret lover.
• Whitfield: Local reverend, has an affair with Addie to produce Jewel. Name symbolizes purity (Why WHITE is in the name).
• Samson: Local farmer
• Mr. Gillespie: his barn gets burned down by Darl
• Mack: Add a description of this character.
• Armstid
• Rachel
• Jody
• Billy

Quotes edit see section history

• “My mother is a fish.”

  Vardaman Bundren

• “'It's Cash and Jewel and Varadaman and Dewey Del', pa says kind of hangdog and proud too, with this teeth and all, even if he wouldn't look at us. 'Meet Mrs Bundren', he says.”

  Cash and Anse Bundren

• “‘”Concrete,” I said. “God Amighty, why didn’t Anse carry you to the nearest sawmill and stick your leg in the saw? That would have cured it. Then you all could have stuck his head into the saw and cured a whole family…”

  Peabody

• “"May God's will be done, now I can get them teeth."”

  Anse

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.

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• I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

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• I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind—and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.

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• In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I dont know what I am. I dont know if I am or not.

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• people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

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• I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping.

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• That’s what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again.

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• Sometimes I aint so sho who’s got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

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• “It’s like a man that’s let everything slide all his life to get set on something that will make the most trouble for everybody he knows.”

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• That’s the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Jefferson Mississippi-: Addie's homeplace where they are trying to get to in the wagon to bury her
• New Hope: Bundren family home in Mississippi
• Mottson

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Eyes and Vision: Faulkner continually focuses on the eyes of his characters
• The character names: Most of the characters names symbolize different things. Darl, Anse, Jewel, Dewey Dell, Cash are the main names.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. William Faulkner (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Rebecca Aidlin (Designer) - Book Design
2. Susan Mitchell - Art Direction
3. Marc J Cohen (Designer)
4. Clarence John Laughlin (Photographer) - Cover Photo

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Nobel Prize in Literature (1949: Literature)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PZ3.F272 As PS3511.A86
• Dewey: 813.52

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Suitable for young adults, often read in high school literature courses; but, it is not a light read. Best read with a discussion group or class.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Classics › Faulkner, William
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › 20th Century
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( F ) › Faulkner, William
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• The Folio Society: In the stifling heat of a Mississippi summer, a woman lies on her deathbed. From her airless room, she can hear her son sawing planks to make her coffin. Two other sons have left to fetch timber; they know that they could miss the moment of their mother’s passing but they cannot resist the chance to earn three dollars. Addie Bundren’s one request is to be buried in Jefferson, 40 miles away. Her family’s terrible journey there will be plagued with disasters of almost biblical proportions, including a flooded river that threatens to sweep away the coffin entirely.
• Wikipedia Article: As I Lay Dying is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. He claimed to have written the novel in six weeks and that he did not change a word of it. Faulkner wrote it while working at a power plant, published in 1930, and described it as a "tour-de-force." It is Faulkner's fifth novel and consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th century literature.<1><2><3><4> The title derives from Book XI of Homer's The Odyssey, wherein Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." The novel is known for its stream of consciousness writing technique, multiple narrators, and varying chapter lengths; in fact, the shortest chapter in the book consists of just five words, "My mother is a fish."

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