As I Lay Dying

Plot summary

The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi.

As the book opens, Addie is alive, though in ill health. Addie and others expect her to die soon, and she sits at a window watching as her firstborn, Cash, builds her coffin. Anse, Addie’s husband, waits on the porch, while their daughter, Dewey Dell, fans her mother in the July heat. The night after Addie dies a heavy rainstorm sets in; rivers rise and wash out bridges the family will need to cross to get to Jefferson.

The family's trek by wagon begins, with Addie’s non-embalmed body in the coffin. Along the way, Anse and the five children encounter various difficulties. Anse stubbornly refuses to accept any charity, including meals or lodging, from people, so at times the family goes hungry and sleeps in barns. Jewel, Addie’s middle child, tries to leave his dysfunctional family, yet cannot turn his back on them through the trials. Cash breaks a leg and winds up riding atop the coffin. He refuses to admit to any discomfort, but the family eventually puts a makeshift cast of concrete on his leg. Twice, the family almost loses Addie’s coffin – first, while crossing a river on a washed-out bridge (two mules are lost) and, second, when a fire of suspicious origin starts in the barn where the coffin is being stored for a night.

After nine days, the family finally arrives in Jefferson, where the stench from the coffin is easily noticed by the townspeople. In town, family members have different items of business to take care of. Cash’s broken leg needs attention. Dewey Dell, for the second time in the novel, goes to a pharmacy, trying to obtain an abortion that she does not know how to ask for. First, though, Anse wants to borrow some shovels to bury Addie, because that was the purpose of the trip and the family should be together for that. Before that happens, however, Darl, the second eldest, is seized for the arson of the barn and sent to the Mississippi State Insane Asylum in Jackson. With Addie only just buried, Anse forces Dewey Dell to give up her money, which he spends on getting "new teeth", and marries the woman from whom he borrowed the spades.

As is the case in much of Faulkner's work, the story is set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, which Faulkner referred to as "my apocryphal county," a fictional rendition of the writer's home of Lafayette County in the same state.

Characters

Literary techniques

Throughout the novel, Faulkner presents 15 different points of view, each chapter narrated by one character, including Addie, who expresses her thoughts after she has already died. In 59 chapters titled only by their narrators' names, the characters are developed gradually through each other's perceptions and opinions, with Darl's predominating.

As I Lay Dying helped to solidify Faulkner's reputation as a pioneer, like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, of stream of consciousness. He first used the technique in The Sound and the Fury, and it gives As I Lay Dying its distinctly intimate tone, through the monologues of the tragically flawed Bundrens and the passers-by whom they encounter. Faulkner plays with the narrative technique by manipulating conventional differences between stream of consciousness and interior monologue. For example, Faulkner has a character such as Darl speak in his interior monologue with far more intellectual diction than he realistically possesses. This is directly playing with conventions of interior monologues because, as Dorrit Cohn states in Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, the language in the interior monologue is "like the language a character speaks to others ... it accords with his time, his place, his social station, level of intelligence ..." The novel helped found the Southern Renaissance and directs a great deal of effort as it progresses to reflections on being and existence, the existential metaphysics of everyday life.

Significance

As I Lay Dying is consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th-century literature. The novel has been reprinted by the Modern Library, the Library of America, and numerous publishers, including Chatto and Windus in 1970, Random House in 1990, Tandem Library in 1991, and Vintage Books in 1996. and the Folio Society in 2013. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 for his novels prior to that date, with this book being among them.

The novel has also directly influenced a number of other critically acclaimed books, including British author Graham Swift's 1996 Booker Prize-winning novel Last Orders and Suzan-Lori Parks's Getting Mother's Body: A Novel, which is a reimagining of Faulkner's novel from an African-American point of view.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked As I Lay Dying 35th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

The Grammy-nominated metalcore band As I Lay Dying derived its name from this novel.

The character Darl Bundren also appeared in Faulkner's 1935 short story "Uncle Willy."

Film adaptation

In 2013, writer/director James Franco released a film adaptation of the novel. The novel was adapted for the screen by James Franco and Matt Rager. Franco viewed it as a challenge because the novel was described as a story impossible to be transformed into a film due to the multi-narrative voices within it. Franco also stars as Darl Bundren.

Theatre adaptation

An adaptation of the novel was presented by Theatre Smith-Gilmour from March 8–31, 2013, at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.