Student Question
What does Addie's father mean by "the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time" in As I Lay Dying?
Quick answer:
In As I Lay Dying, Addie's father means that life is a preparation for death, highlighting the theme of mortality. He suggests that in their harsh world, death can be a release from suffering, and that our earthly lives are a small part of a larger eternal story. This perspective encourages seeing life in the context of its inevitable end.
This particular quotation illustrates one of the book's main themes, that of the nature of mortality. In this part of the world, with its grinding poverty and chronic lack of opportunity, death can so often be seen as a blessed release from the many privations of everyday life.
That's what Addie's father was driving at in the above quotation. However hard life gets, it will one day end. The reason for living can be found in its ending, after which eternity awaits each and every soul. What Addie's father is doing here is to focus on the bigger picture and to get his daughter to see that our mortal lives on Earth are just a very small and insignificant part of the human story.
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