As I Lay Dying
eBook - ePub

As I Lay Dying

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

As I Lay Dying

About this book

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is consistently ranked among the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Set in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the book tells of the hapless and tormented Bundren family. Addie, the long-suffering matriarch, is lying on her deathbed, tended by her daughter, Dewey Dell. Outside, her son Cash is crafting the coffin she will soon need.

The novel tells not only of Addie’s death but of the family’s arduous trek thirty miles away to bury her among her ancestors in accordance with her wishes. The journey, by wagon, takes them over a flooding bridge, where the coffin containing Addie’s unembalmed body is nearly washed away.

Faulkner, telling the story through the stereoscopic view of fifteen different characters, paints a starkly beautiful portrait not only of a family’s confrontation with death but their twisted and ambivalent relations with one another: Anse, the shiftless and selfish father; the oldest son, Darl, tormented by love for a mother that is not reciprocated; the second son, Jewel, favored by Addie but who does not love her; Dewey Dell, the pregnant unwed teen; and the youngest, Vardaman, who views the panoply with the naive but acute perception of a little boy.

The title comes from a line in Homer’s Odyssey that is spoken by Agamemnon in the underworld: “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades.”

Published in 1930, As I Lay Dying marks the beginning of Faulkner’s mature period, which includes Sanctuary, Light in August, and Absalom! Absalom! and solidifies his position as what many consider to be the greatest American author of the twentieth century. Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, called him “the greatest artist the South has produced.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. In his famous acceptance speech, he said, “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Information

Publisher
Maple Spring Publishing
Year
2026
Print ISBN
9798350501872
eBook ISBN
9798350501889
Topic
Literature
Subtopic
Classics
Index
Literature

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Darl
  6. Cora
  7. Darl
  8. Darl
  9. Cora
  10. Dewey Dell
  11. Tull
  12. Anse
  13. Darl
  14. Peabody
  15. Darl
  16. Vardaman
  17. Dewey Dell
  18. Vardaman
  19. Tull
  20. Darl
  21. Cash
  22. Vardaman
  23. Tull
  24. Darl
  25. Cash
  26. Darl
  27. Vardaman
  28. Darl
  29. Anse
  30. Darl
  31. Anse
  32. Samson
  33. Dewey Dell
  34. Tull
  35. Darl
  36. Tull
  37. Darl
  38. Vardaman
  39. Tull
  40. Darl
  41. Cash
  42. Cora
  43. Addie
  44. Whitfield
  45. Darl
  46. Armstid
  47. Vardaman
  48. Moseley
  49. Darl
  50. Vardaman
  51. Darl
  52. Vardaman
  53. Darl
  54. Vardaman
  55. Darl
  56. Cash
  57. Peabody
  58. Mac Gowan
  59. Vardaman
  60. Darl
  61. Dewey Dell
  62. Cash

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