Addie Bundren: An Exceptional Protagonist Essay Example

As I Lay Dying revolves around Addie, the exceptional woman who reserves a special position in the female persona of literary world. Her physical illness and instability never silences her power in the novel. In fact she emerges the most powerful person despite her deteriorating health and impending death. The novel traces the journey of Addie and the family members from their home county, Yoknapatawpha to Addie’s native town, Jefferson.
Addie Bundren is the central character in the novel. She is the spouse of Anse Bundren, and the exceptional mother of the five children, Darl, Jewel, Cash, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. Addie is the deceased protagonist and her demise prompts the action of the novel. She is an incompetent school teacher, in her family’s opinion, whose hostile, insensitive life makes her hate Anse, her husband. The novel portrays her strange profane desire to be buried close to her blood relations than with her own family. Cora Tull is the spokesperson for Addie and it is very clear from the story that Addie’s character and her life incidents gets revealed through Tull’s memories and through Addie’s own short narrative section in the novel. Addie is painted as a resilient and rational woman disturbed by a sense of cynicism. However it is difficult to categorise Addie as an unsympathetic and hardened character as she is completely and fully trapped by social and familial circumstances.
Addie’s colourless life makes her detached from her husband and her children and fails to fulfil and enjoy the phases of being a wife and a mother. Her plight is substantiated through her own thoughts: “When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride!”(As I Lay Dying 76) Addie’s behaviour is the result of her childhood grooming. She was born as a lonely and secluded soul, reviled by her family and strongly affected by the pessimistic viewpoint of her father, who had educated her that the motive for existing could be seen as a lengthy grounding for death. Her decision to be buried at Jefferson and thus stay away from her family after her death is based on the belief she inherited from her father: “I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time” (75).
Addie feels detested in presence of her kith and kin. When she got married to Anse, she hopes that her life definitely brings her unforgettable fondling memories. But she fails miserably. Anse fails to fulfil her prejudiced notions of how a husband should be. His uncut hair and mismatched looks frustrated her that she often argues with him: "If you've got any women folks, why in the world don’t they make you get your hair cut" (76)? Even her children couldn’t offer the joy and delight that she longed for. The only little encouragement and enjoyment she finds in life is the short lived love affair with Whitfield and the son, Jewel, born out of their passion. Contrary to her expectations, Jewel too mistreats her. Jewel’s attitude changes only after his mother’s death. Addie devotes her entire lifetime and vitality in a love that derives at fulfilment only after her death.
Addie’s death does not put an end to her connection with the family and the events. It is quite true to say that Addie’s death is the reason for the major turn of events in the novel. Addie, even after death, influences the life of all the other characters. The events that happen after Addie’s death exemplify her magnetic presence throughout the story. As Constance Pierce points out:
Consequently for all the strength of her will, Addie is unable to find in life, a state of being, of wholeness, of stasis into which she can escape from the victimising forces of nature, language and consciousness and from the fragmented mosaic of selves that have resulted from her will’s repeatedly having gone up against these forces. In short, she comes to see that there is no place in life--indeed, no “self” in life—where one can simply Be (2).
Life and death have been treated associatively in the novel. Addie, in a way, inspires the living members. She urges the family to take the struggle to take her corpse to Jefferson, Mississippi. Her differences in concern to her children makes them behave in various manners and Jewel, whom she cares and loves the most, accomplishes deeds of valour. A scrutinized assessment of Addie Bundren discloses that she is not alone portrayed as conventional, but as hurtful and rude. Her personality is more multifarious than heinous, feeble, frustrated, or dead. Her courage is ironically employed to seize the patriarchal reign with which it has been conventionally associated.