Has anyone here read "As I Lay Dying"? by William Faulkner. I recently had to read it for a literature class at the U. At first I was put off by the style it was written. (it had about 15 characters narrate the book). I guess it grew on me eventually, It was about a southern american family who tried to fulfill a mother's (and wifes) wish to be burried in a nearby city. Sounds a bit boring, but it was interesting, and I'm not even really into fiction anymore. at any rate, if anyone has any thoughts about this book i suppose this is the place.

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I’ve read as I lay dying, I actually really enjoyed the book, though Faulkner’s writing style was confusing at times. I find it interesting how Darl, who is the main narrator at the beginning of the story and narrates about one out of every three sections, “loses it” and tries to burn down a barn and his mother’s coffin that is in it. It just totally shows how much Addie’s (his mother’s) death could change who was at one time the most sane character in the story. Cash (Darl’s brother) seems to become the new main narrator of the story, which is interesting, because at the beginning of the story I found him completely dry and sardonic, and he barely had anything to say, but I think perhaps the fact that he was able to absorb himself in his carpentry saved him. Vardaman just seemed freaky to me at first, but his whole talk about “my mother is a fish” just basically meant that he replaced Addie with a fish, and Jewel replaced her with a horse. The whole book is basically about dealing with tragedy. Dewey Dell of course was too preoccupied with being pregnant, and Anse just seemed to brush it off. The only person who actually tried to deal with Addie’s death mentally ended up going “crazy.”
(for those of you who haven’t read it, Darl, Cash, Jewel, and Vardaman are brothers, their sister is Dewey Dell, their father is Anse and their mother Addie died.)
Cash draws probably the most important conclusion in the story, that basically, it’s not as easy to tell if someone’s crazy as one would think, and I don’t think Darl was really insane until he was taken away. It’s a fuzzy line between crazy and sane.

 

 

 

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