as i lay dying

As I Lay Dying is a novel published in 1930 and written by American author William Faulkner. The novel, which Faulkner himself referred to as a "tour de force", was the author's fifth and is read in many schools and colleges across the United States, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking countries. The title comes from Book XI of Homer's The Odyssey when Agamemnon is speaking to Odysseus which Faulkner would often recite from memory: "As I lay dying the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades."

Plot summary

The book is told in stream of consciousness style by 15 different narrators in 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren, the wife of a poor Mississippi hill farmer, and her family's quest -- noble or selfish -- to honor her wish to be buried with "her people" in the town of Jefferson.

On the journey, Addie's favorite child, Jewel, saves his mother's body from flood and fire, and the thoughts of each of the Bundrens are revealed. Most interesting is Darl, the second oldest, who exhibits moments of prescience and attempts to put an end to the family's trip.

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 mythical rendering of the writer's home of Lafayette County in that same state.

Faulkner is noted to be one of the pioneers of stream of consciousness, like James Joyce before him. This technique, which he began in The Sound and the Fury, continues in As I Lay Dying, giving the book its characteristic monologues from the tragically flawed Bundrens and the passers-by they encounter. The story helped kickstart the Southern Renaissance and spends a great deal of time devoted to the notion of being and existence, flirting with metaphysics as it progresses. The novel, in regards to Addie Bundren's lone chapter, also helped bring issues of feminism in literature to the foreground of a nation lost within itself, solidifying the traditional belief that a woman's voice can only be heard once she has died. It has also been considered that the issue is one of motherhood, rather than general feminism. Addie disregards her children, which greatly injures them psycologically and emotionally, proving how important a mother truly is to her children. The novel has a now famous chapter that contains only one sentence; it reads: "My mother is a fish."