Resumo de As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

No one can deny that As I lay dying is written as series of inner psychological dialogues, and as we may also call: series of stream-of-consciousness monologues, in which the characters thoughts are presented. This technique, indeed, makes the character?s psychology the dominated concern and it shows the psychology with more complexity and authority than any other narrative style. Every major character in this novel has got his portion of madness, psychological troubles and mental struggles; as it is clear from their strange ideas and their unexpected behaviours. So, if the major characters have really a degree of madness. What are the behaviours that manifest their insanity? and what are the reasons behind that?

Many behaviours of the major characters in the novel are odd and express insanity. Addie Bundern who is the mother of the five children (Vardaman, Darl, Dewey dell, Jewel an Cash) and who is dying, asked to be buried with her family in Jefferson. This request is without any sense and had caused her family great sufferance and disappointment. She could be buried simply and quickly where she died. Because, she won?t feel anything after her death, as if taking her dead body to Jefferson won?t make her feel lonely near to her ancestors in the graveyard! That?s really insane. And let have a look on Cash, the oldest son and a passive kind person, he is spending all the time working on his mother?s coffin. He thinks he is a real carpenter and everybody is proud of him and of his work, but indeed everybody sympathies with him. Besides that there is, Dewey dell who is the only daughter of Addie and Anse, tries to get an abortion from a local pharmacist with no luck. Anse who is the father of the family is careless and doesn?t think before he acts in most of the acts he does: he forces the family to travel through flooding and outlandish circumstances, sends Darl away when he discovered him as the responsible of the fire, trading Jewel?s horse for the team of mules, stealing Dewy Dell?s ten dollars, and the strangest and the funniest thing is his ambition to have new set of teeth and a new wife. We have also to mention the crazy behaviour of Vardaman when he put holes in his mother?s coffin and Darl who is the crazy son of Anse and Addie; he goes insane officially when he set the fire in the Gillepie?s Barn.

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