Introduction to As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

1
Introduction toAs I Lay Dying by William
Faulkner
Prepared by Ms. Teref D
2
William Faulkners Bio

• 1897-1962, Mississippi
• Famous novels The Sound and the Fury (1929) As
  I Lay Dying (1930) much critical praise, not
  commercially successful.
• Faulkner received the 1949 Nobel Prize for
  Literature (why does this matter?
• During the last ten years of his life, he
  traveled, lectured, and became an outspoken
  critic of segregation. In 1962, after years of
  drinking and a succession of physical problems,
  he died in Mississippi.

3
Historical Context

• On October 24, 1929, the day before Faulkner
  began writing As I Lay Dying, the stock market
  crashed marking the beginning of the Great
  Depression of the 1930s.
• In the rural South, however, economic hardship
  had been a way of life for years, especially for
  poor farmers. What do you know about the Civil
  War, Shermans March, the Reconstruction?
• Religion in this poor white rural community was a
  potent factor, and a person's relationship with
  God provided one with values, activities, and
  friends. Many critics contend that poor whites
  used religious beliefs as a means of coping with
  economic deprivation, social inferiority, and
  political weakness.

4
Making ConnectionsSound familiar?

• - Southern writer
• Concerned with the rural poor of the South
• Concerned with the legacy of war, slavery
• - Interest in the grotesque, freaks, the
  powerlessness of the south ? Southern Gothic
  (nudge, nudge)
• - e.g. FOF textbook salesman from Denmark
  kissing a corpse (most recent gossip from the
  deep South from Ms. Teref)

5
Map of the South U.S.
6
Pictures from the rural South in the 1930s
Purpose and Implication
7
Pictures from the rural South in the 1930s
8
Pictures from the rural South
9
Themes

• Alienation and Loneliness use of multiple
  narrators, characters inability to communicate
  effectively
• Death journey to bury a decomposing corpse
• Language limitation of language dialect,
  grammar, education
• Love and Passion parental love, extramarital
  affairs, rejection of spouse, childrens love
  for parents
• Sanity and Insanity descent into madness,
  abortion, telepathy, hypersensitivity.
• Sound familiar? Which literary works have we read
  so far that we can make connections with?

10
Making ConnectionsThe Modern Novel

• - Unreliable narrator/POV
• - Dystopian world (opposite of Utopia)
  frustration with the world, existentialist
  concerns
• - Nonlinear narrative structure
• DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? Have we read a modern
  novel before?

11
Style if you feel confused about whos speaking
to whom

• Setting northern part of Mississippi in 1928
• Point of View 59 chapters narrated by 15
  different characters. Darl is the most frequent
  voice, narrating 19 chapters
• Stream of
  Consciousness
• a literary technique reproducing exact thoughts,
  like a live broadcast of whats going on in the
  mind of certain characters. These thoughts are
  direct, revealing, unedited, ungrammatical,
  chaotic, unpunctuated, spontaneous,
  uncontrolled... Faulkner does not use this
  technique in all of his chapters, restricting it
  primarily to the Bundren Family, especially Darl
  and Vardaman.
• Example Vardaman reacts hysterically "I ran
  down into the water to help and I couldn't stop
  hollering because Darl was strong and steady
  holding her under the water even if she did fight
  he would not let her go he was seeing me and he
  would hold her and it was all right now it was
  all right now it was all right.
• Example Cora, p. 6 how is her stream of
  consciousness revealed?