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As I Lay Dying
Jewel and Cash see themselves in very different ways; Cash is a responsible son who sacrifices himself for his mother, while Jewel is the prized son who always receives his mother's attention....
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As I Lay Dying
The female protagonists in both Madame Bovary and As I lay Dying are similar in the sense that both were women who were deeply unhappy in their marriages. In Madame Bovary, Emma finds that marriage...
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As I Lay Dying
Through Cash's description of making his mother's coffin, the reader can tell that he is very meticulous and also has a difficult time dealing with her death. Instead of engaging directly with his...
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As I Lay Dying
Modernism has come to be identified with a few specific stylistic methods and a few over-arching themes. Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying exemplifies the hallmarks of modernism in both of these areas as...
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As I Lay Dying
In Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Cora indicates that Darl has a different relationship to his mother Addie than his brothers and sisters do that she, for some reason, can sense: It was like he would...
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As I Lay Dying
We can say that the two concepts that anchor this novel are family and psychology. These concepts are intertwined in some complex ways and we can see this exemplified in the chapter that depicts...
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As I Lay Dying
Impassioned and wild and set apart from the family, Jewel has a special connection to a horse just as his mother has a special connection to him. "Jewel Bundren, Preacher Whitfield’s...
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As I Lay Dying
Vardaman Bundren in William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying is a six-year-old child, brought up in an eccentric family living in the rural south, who has just been traumatized by the death of his...
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As I Lay Dying
Addie calls Jewel her salvation because he is born out of love for another man (Whitfield). Since Anse has no real claim to the boy, Jewel, as a separate child from her loveless relationship with...
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As I Lay Dying
In my opinion, Darl Bundren is the most interesting character in As I Lay Dying. He is an intuitive, misunderstood by the world and the other characters of the novel and, as such, is labeled...
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As I Lay Dying
In the 40th section of As I Lay Dying, Addie assumes the role of the narrator. She explains and reflects on her true feelings of resentment for Anse and the children the two of them made together....
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As I Lay Dying
With fifteen different narratives in the form of stream of consciousness, the reader of As I Lay Dying understands that there are fifteen different realities--no absolutes. In this way, the reader...
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As I Lay Dying
The first thing to understand about Faulkner's work is that he was not writing about "society" in As I Lay Dying. He was writing about a rural sector of Southern society. There is no expectation...
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As I Lay Dying
This is an interesting question requiring us to engage in some conjecture. We can only surmise about what the reasons for this might be. Some evidence we might consider: Jewel and Addie are...
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As I Lay Dying
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As I Lay Dying
An underlying theme in both As I Lay Dying and To the Lighthouse might be that life is disappointing. In each case, we have a group of people whose interactions are strained and confused, and who...
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As I Lay Dying
The way this question is posed presents a bit of a conundrum. In the novel, both Addie and Anse are largely passive and absent as parents in terms of modelling behavior, providing affection, and...
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As I Lay Dying
You have selected a good list of themes. What you need to do now of course is go through the book and pick out quotes that you can use to support your exploration of those themes. What examples can...
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As I Lay Dying
In this novel by William Faulkner, we can discuss the central themes of the text and attempt to interpret the text's meaning. This is different from identifying a thesis, though we can attempt to...
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As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner is a writer who appreciated good writing. He wanted to be judged at least as much by the skill of his phrasing as by the themes or ideas dealt with in his works. He was, in fact, a...
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As I Lay Dying
Addie Bundren is bitter. She was bitter as a school teacher and she is bitter as a wife. Addie's one moment of joy and freedom came when she had an affair, cheating on Anse and becoming pregnant...
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As I Lay Dying
There is a cruel irony in Cash, the most physically and mentally balanced member of the family, being incapacitated and breaking his leg after a fall. The rest of his family, who do not appreciate...
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As I Lay Dying
I see the bananas as something longed for which shows the limitations of the Bundren's imagination and/or aspiration. Anse only longs for teeth and a new wife, Dewy Dell not to be pregnant and...
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As I Lay Dying
Darl Bundren can be considered a tragic hero largely because his greatest strength leads to his downfall. To make the argument for this point, we will need to look further at what defines tragedy...
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As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner’s decision to use the “stream of consciousness” technique in his novel titled As I Lay Dying gives the novel a number of different tones, since the separate consciousness of...
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As I Lay Dying
Darl is probably the most dynamic character in the book, in the sense that he undergoes the greatest change. His defining characteristic is perceptiveness, and that characteristic does remain...
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As I Lay Dying
In certain ways, Darl is the most intelligent and perceptive character in the novel, and may be the one with whom we are intended to sympathize. On one level, we can think of him as a shell-shocked...
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As I Lay Dying
I would say that none of the Bundren’s get what they deserve. Selfish, lazy Anse has a new set of teeth and a new wife. It could be argued that this is in some way deserved as he has travelled so...
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As I Lay Dying
Darl is responsible for telling more of the story than anyone else, and we should sympathise with the burdens which he carries, as he is the character who has the most empathy for others. In this...
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As I Lay Dying
I think that Darl deserves to be free of the burdens of his family, and it is touching that Cash is able to see that Darl deserves something better. However, I concur with #2 in that he does not...
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As I Lay Dying
I think it is not Anse per se that the children show respect to, but the institution of family. Although Anse is lazy and dishonest, he does intend to keep his family together, even to the point of...
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As I Lay Dying
Buzzards gather around carrion, or rotting bodies. Therefore buzzards are almost always a symbol of death or decay in a novel, or the circle of life. They can also symbolize the danger of nature,...
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As I Lay Dying
This is a very difficult question. The answer is not necessarily "out there" to be found, as Faulkner's use of italics in this novel are not entirely consistent. We can see some relationship...
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As I Lay Dying
It's true that a stylized fish symbol is widely used today as a symbol for Christ or Christianity, but I'm not sure that I see Christian symbolism in Vardaman's statement in As I Lay Dying. Rather,...
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As I Lay Dying
The fate of the Bundren family is determined by one man's ironic belief in his own doom, which he uses to manipulate those around him for his own eventual gain. Anse Bundren gets what he wants...
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As I Lay Dying
Modernist literature often concentrates on a “personal relationship with the past”. The overwhelming subtext of As I Lay Dying deals directly with this concept, focusing thematically and...
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As I Lay Dying
This is one of my favorite novels and it might be the most "accessible" of Faulkner's masterpiece works. As I Lay Dying explores Faulkner's major themes of identity, personal relationship to...
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As I Lay Dying
This topic is actually a quite rich one in relation to As I Lay Dying. One way to read this novel is to see it as an exploration of several types of love or modes of the expression of love. Love...
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As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner's darkly comic novel, As I Lay Dying, all of the action of the narrative finds its focal point in the death of Addie Bundren. Thus, the motif of death is recurrent throughout the...
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As I Lay Dying
Dewey Dell and Darl share a trait: both have the ability to "talk without the words," although Darl possesses the trait more acutely than his sister. When he sees Dewey Dell, he knows she is...
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As I Lay Dying
One way to simplify this novel is to suggest to your students a set of themes that As I Lay Dying explores. Reading the novel thematically can help to organize a reading response to a novel that is...
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As I Lay Dying
It depends on what your objective for the study of the novel is. It is always best to choose a set of objectives first. One of my favorite strategies is Socratic seminars. I have my students...
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As I Lay Dying
Dewey Dell may be the character with the most obvious development in As I Lay Dying. Many of the characters possess psychological depth, but Dewey Dell faces challenges within the narrative that...
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As I Lay Dying
Darl is the most perceptive and intuitive of the novel's narrators, and the reader hears his voice more than any other character. The other characters are in some way limited in their narrations...
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As I Lay Dying
Cora and Addie are discussing the relative challenges of womanhood, and it is here that we think Cora realises that Addie has a secret she will not reveal. Cora grumbles about Addie that- You’d...
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As I Lay Dying
Typically, when writing an essay on a novel, it is best to focus on one major theme (or two very similar themes) analyzed through the use of three different literary elements. This will give you...
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As I Lay Dying
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying does not rank high on the social issues pecking order, but here are a few: Lack of education: Sex education is non-existent; Dewey Dell doesn't know how she got pregnant....
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As I Lay Dying
This is an interesting question. I have always enjoyed and been intrigued by Darl's character and his clairvoyance. I read it, ultimately, as a trait that sets him apart from everyone, not just the...
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As I Lay Dying
It seems to me that we can look at Jewel as being a product of Anse's stubborn insistence on "not doing for himself." Whenever he can get help instead of doing work, Anse will get help. How long...
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As I Lay Dying
Darl's narration on page 97 of As I Lay Dying is a recursive account of Jewel's cursing rant. It echoes his only narration on page 14 in which he likewise curses about Cash building the coffin:...