As I Lay Dying

Why does Faulkner give Addie only one chapter — and place it in the middle of the novel rather than at the beginning? What would be gained or lost if we heard Addie's voice first?

Darl narrates events he is not physically present for, including his mother's death and details of the barn fire. Is he psychic, delusional, or imagining with preternatural accuracy? Does it matter which?

Vardaman says 'My mother is a fish.' Analyze this statement as a child's philosophical proposition, not as evidence of mental illness. What is his internal logic?

Cash builds the coffin with extraordinary care while Addie watches from the window. Is this act of carpentry loving, cruel, or both? How does Cash himself understand it?

Addie says 'words are no good; that words don't ever fit even what they are trying to say.' How does the novel's fifteen-narrator structure either prove or disprove her thesis?

Why does Faulkner include Whitfield's chapter? He is a minor character. What work does his cowardice do in a novel full of people who are trying, if disastrously, to keep their word?

The novel has been called 'the funniest tragic novel in American literature.' Identify three moments that are genuinely comic. What is the relationship between the novel's humor and its horror?

Why does Dewey Dell agree to commit Darl to the asylum? Is her assent morally justified, pragmatically necessary, or straightforwardly wrong?

Darl's final chapter has him referring to himself in the third person: 'Darl has gone to Jackson.' What does this shift in pronoun indicate, and why is it the most disturbing formal choice in the novel?

Anse borrows, takes, and extracts from every member of his family throughout the novel, yet frames each extraction as God's will or necessity. Is he a villain? Is he a victim? What label does the novel actually assign him?

Compare Jewel's relationship to his mother with Darl's. One acts, one observes. One saves the coffin physically, one burns the barn. Which is the more loving response to death — action or understanding?

The novel is narrated by fifteen characters, none of whom is Faulkner. How does the absence of an authoritative narrator change the experience of reading the novel? What do we lose without it?

Addie says she gave Anse Dewey Dell 'to negative Jewel' and Vardaman to 'replace the child I had robbed him of.' She categorizes her children by their function in a moral bookkeeping system. What does this reveal about how she experienced motherhood?

The novel ends with Anse presenting a new wife to his children. Cash simply reports it. No character expresses outrage. What is Faulkner saying by refusing to give the ending any moral weight?

MacGowan at the drugstore sexually exploits Dewey Dell while pretending to provide abortion treatment. This is assault. Why does Faulkner not signal outrage or assign consequences? How should a contemporary reader process this?

Cash's leg is encased in concrete by Anse as a makeshift cast. Cash accepts this with no complaint. The doctor later says the bones will be bad for the rest of Cash's life. What does Cash's acceptance — without protest — tell us about the Bundren family's relationship to suffering?

Cora Tull is confident that Darl loves Addie best and Jewel least. She has it completely backwards. Why does Faulkner make his most pious character his most reliably wrong one?

As I Lay Dying was written in six weeks on night shifts at a power plant. Does knowing the conditions of its composition change how you read it? Should biographical context affect interpretation?

The novel's title comes from the Odyssey (Book XI) — Agamemnon speaks from Hades: 'As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades.' Who is speaking the title of this novel? Addie? Darl? Faulkner?

Compare Addie's philosophy that words are inadequate to experience with Darl's extraordinary verbal facility. Is Darl proving her wrong, or is his eloquence — which fails to change anything — actually proving her right?

Identify the three characters who are most physically damaged by the journey (Cash, Dewey Dell, Jewel). What do they have in common? What does their suffering purchase for the family?

Why is the novel set in Mississippi rather than, say, New England or the Midwest? How would a different geography change the novel's meaning?

Jewel saves the coffin from the river and from the burning barn. In both cases, he acts while others watch. What does it mean that the novel's most inarticulate character is also its most effective?

The Bundrens are refused shelter, harassed by neighbors who smell the coffin, and watched by circling buzzards. How does the community's response function in the novel — is it judgment, comedy, or both?

Compare As I Lay Dying to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or another novel involving institutionalization. What does society gain by institutionalizing its most perceptive members?

Vardaman drills holes in the coffin lid so his mother can breathe. This is simultaneously the most irrational and the most loving act in the novel. Make the case for each reading.

The novel's title is spoken by no character in the book. Who is 'I' in 'As I Lay Dying'? Argue for at least two candidates.

Faulkner wrote the novel in 1929 but set it in a deliberately non-specific 'present.' What is gained by not giving the novel a specific year?

Read Cash's numbered list of reasons for the coffin's bevel out loud. What does the list form do emotionally that a paragraph would not? Why is the list a more moving form of grief than prose meditation?

The novel ends without resolution for any of the children: Cash is crippled, Dewey Dell is still pregnant, Vardaman is traumatized, Jewel has lost his horse, Darl is in an asylum. Anse has new teeth and a new wife. Is this an ending? What does Faulkner refuse to give us, and why?