Study Guide: As I Lay Dying                    Back to literature links

As you read Faulkner's novel, there are a number of points to keep in mind. These points, however, are more or less for discussion and for journal writing than for "factual" reference. After all, for all the novel's depth and complexity, what actually happens is fairly transparent. Therefore, as you read, keep some of these points and questions in mind; they will help to guide you and our classroom discussions.

Because the novel is divided up into small sections narrated by the various characters, there is no central and objective voice. What effect has that got on the reader?
Addie Bundren is a passionate and almost violent woman who has no use for words and what they try to do. Who else in the novel is most like her?
Darl is given 19 sections to narrate and Vardaman 10. All of the other family members get about 14 among them. Why such a disparity?
How are we supposed to feel about Anse? Is he comic? Tragic? Contemptible? Does Faulkner want us to hate, pity, or admire him?
This is essentially an heroic novel, describing an odyssey of sometimes epic grandeur. Who are the real heroes? Do they know it? If not, why?
Darl's clarity of thought is ironic because, basically, he's mad. Indicate some instances of both in the novel.
The river crossing and the barn burning are the two most momentous events in the novel. Examine each carefully. Whom does Faulkner choose as narrators in these sections? Why? Is there a deep connection between the two? Remember what Addie said of Jewel and remember the Biblical symbolism here.
Addie is so incredibly vital that she, in a sense, goes on living for many days after her death. Anse, on the other hand, seems to have died years ago. Explain.
Some of the most vivid scenes in the book, surprisingly, don't happen in "real time"; they are simply imaginary constructs in Darl's mind. Which are these scenes? Why do you think Faulkner has them occur only in imagination?
Dewey Dell is at once an incredibly simple and amazingly complex character. She's simple in that she's single-mindedly focused on her one and only purpose for getting to town, but complex in the many different ways she's seen by the men of the story--notably Darl and the two druggists. Explain this a little.
Vardaman is not mad like Darl, but his is the confusion and terror of a child confronted with death. How would the novel be different if he had no part to play in it?
It's easy to dismiss Cash as a simpleton and a clown, yet he has strength and depth that are necessary to the novel. What is his especial strength, and what is his role in both the family and in the overall fabric of society?
Tull and Cora and Peabody help us to see the Bundren clan, occasionally, from the outside. What's the difference between the family that we get to know over the course of the novel and the family that the "outsiders" see?
Jewel is passionate, angry, violent, and intense. How, really, do you feel about him by the end of the novel? With whom does he share the majority of his personality?
Faulkner gives many of the characters in this book some incredibly sophisticated and poetic things to say in their minds--things they would never be capable of articulating with speech. Find some examples of these dichotomies, and explain what Faulkner might have been attempting when he did this.
Reverend Whitfield and Cora represent the "religious" element in the book. How are they represented? By extension, does their depiction in the novel have anything to say about the role of religion in the lives of the Bundrens?
Is the novel, as a whole, comic or tragic?
Faulkner's narrative technique, both in this novel and in many others he wrote, is to come at things indirectly--allowing his narrators to omit key elements of the story, to hint at things that might better be presented explicitly, and to drift between their internal and external worlds imperceptibly. What overall effect does this have on the novel and on the reader's response to it? Do you think that it would be a better or worse book if Faulkner wrote just as well but in a more conventional style? Why?