As I Lay Dying: Plot Summary

As I Lay Dying: Plot Summary

Addie Bundren,the wife and mother of a poor southern family, is very ill and expected to die soon. According to her wish, Cash, Addie's oldest son makes a coffin for her in front of her window so she can see it. Though knowing she is dying, her two sons, Jewel and Darl, go to the town for a delivery that will earn them three dollars. Addie dies before they return.

Addie has asked her husband Anse to bury her with her family in the town of Jefferson; Anse decides to fulfill this promise, so the family starts the journey with a rickety wagon. When they pass the bridge, it is washed away by heavy rain so they almost lose the coffin, and the mules are drown. Cashes breaks his leg again, and the rest of the family, alng with their neighber Tull, searches for Cash's carpentry tool in the river.

Addie speaks as a dead, recalling her loveless marriage to Anse and her affair with the local minister, Whitfield, which led to Jewel’s conception. Explanation for her attitudes toward different children and the wish to be buried in Jefferson is revealed.

With the pain of a broken leg, Cash still moves on with his family. Anse takes his saving for false teeth, Cash's saving for a gramophone, and Jewel's horse to purchase a new team of mules. In the town of Mottson, residents react with horror to the stench coming from the wagon. Dewey Dell tries to buy a drug in town that will abort her unwanted pregnancy, but the pharmacist refuses to sell her. They buy cement in town to make a makeshift cast for Cash’s broken leg, which only makes Cash's situation worse. The Bundrens then spend the night at a local farm owned by a man named Gillespie. The barn on the farm burns in the night, but Jewel risks his life to drag out the coffin. Darl lies on his mother’s coffin and cries.

The family arrive in Jefferson and bury Addie the next day. They find Darl is the one who sets the fire and Gillespie may sue them, so they claim Darl insane and give him to a pair of men who commit him to a Jackson mental institution. Dewey Dell tries again to buy an abortion drug at the local pharmacy but is tricked into exchanging sexual services. The father comes back to his children the following morning with a new set of false teeth and a new bride--a local woman with a gramophone, whom he borrows shovels to bury Addie from.

source from:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/asilay/summary.html