Free As I Lay Dying Essay Sample

As I Lay Dying is a literal work of William Faulkner, An American author, written in the year 1930. The book incorporates 15 different voices of different characters and comprises of 59 chapters. The author ideally forewent the perspective of a single character ensuring that the reader takes an active part in the construction of the story. The 15 voices employed in the novel across the 59 chapters further allow the audience to achieve a psychological insight of the work through the multiple conflicting interpretations. Set in Yoknapatawpha County, the novel’s characters are greatly interlinked with other Faulkner’s works such as The Hamlet. The Faulkner novels for an avid audience, read like a complex story in which families, events, and people resurface over and again. Ranked among the most loved literal works of the 20th-century literature, As I Lay Dying enabled Faulkner put the Southern America literature on the world map.
The plot of the story spirals in the 59 chapters with the multiple voices providing various character roles and perceptions. The novel starts with one of the main characters, Addie, in ill health. Addie Bundren is a mother to four children; Darl, Cash, Vardaman and Dewey Dell. She also happens to be the wife of Anse Bundren. She is a protagonist in the story with the whole plot revolving around the aftermath of her death and how her family comes to terms with it. In the various narrations within the book, it is established that Addie, a former high school teacher, led a loveless life that made her loath her husband and invested much of her affection to her favorite child, Jewel. Addie’s views and perceptions are expressed in the story’s context are expressed through another character named Cora Tull. In her narration, she hails Addie as an intelligent woman who continuously was disappointed with marriage life. It is after the birth of her second child that through her hate for the marital life expresses the desire to be buried in far lands of Jefferson. It is this hate that also led her to engage in an affair with Whitfield that brought about Jewel. Cora also confesses that Addie was more inclined to her son, Jewel than to God.
Addie’s corpse plays a pivotal role in the whole story as it portrays the divisions and tense ties between various members of the family. Various incidents in the plot reflect a mutual feeling by many of the characters that somewhat Adie was still alive. This is well achieved by the voices of various characters in the plot. Vardaman, one of her sons, for instance, makes holes in her coffin to allow her to breathe with ease. Darl and Vardaman also confess to hearing noises of her decomposing body which they ultimately assert that it is their mother who was trying to speak in the enclosed coffin. The smell of her decomposing corpse also attracts various strangers who were curious to know who she was. This continuity incorporated both by the living Addie and her corpse captures a very emotive aspect that dominates the entire book.
Another key voice in the book is Darl Bundren. He virtually narrates in 19 of the 59 chapters with poetic and analytical descriptions that manage to put the book in perception. His subjective perspective offers much guidance to Faulkner’s work. His intellectual nature hinders him to surface as a flashy hero like Jewel or unselfish as his brother Cash. In his narration, Darl expresses an objection to the whole journey to Jefferson which later in the story proved cumbersome to the rest of the family and mourners. This objection saw him abandoning his mother’s coffin on a failed rive-crossing and also burning the Gillespie’s barn where Adie’s eight-day corpse was. His philosophical analysis of those around him made him an alien to the rest of the family. He manages to arrive at various characters deep-seated secrets such as Dewey Dell-Laffe affair and also Jewel being Anse’s wedlock son.
Cash, the eldest son, is the other voice notably observed in the novel. He represents true patience and self-sacrifice throughout the plot by his words and deeds. He does not object the burying of his mother in Jefferson though it was a distant land. His primary focus was to ensure his mother’s wish to be respected. He singlehandedly makes his mother’s coffin using his expertise as a carpenter. Despite his broken leg, Cash asserts that he was still well to take part in the journey to Jefferson for the sake of his dead mother. Along the journey, when the wagon encounters a stray log, Cash’s leg is injured further. He even agrees to give away the money he was saving for a gramophone to be used to purchase a new set of mules to ensure that the journey was completed. Jewel is another voice that surfaces in the story. The voice carries much hate towards the rest of the family which can be linked to the fact that he was born as a result of an affair between Adie and Whitfield. He fails to bid goodbye his mother as she lay on her deathbed. He is also shown as an independent character through his purchase of a horse from his earnings from working at a neighbor’s farm. His cold nature puts him in an antagonistic relationship with brother Darl, who perceives him as “wooden” in many instances in the novel.