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

As I Lay Dying: Theme of Religion

Theme of religion in As I Lay Dying

Divine justice is not just in the story; who is rewarded with good luck is not upright. Also, the minister, while preaching chastity and morality, is a hypocritical adulterer who illegitimately fathers a son. However, characters in the story often back up their own ideas with religion beliefs. The following quotes are as examples:

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“Riches is nothing in the face of the Lord, for He can see into the heart.” (2.5)

Here Cora is reminded of her religion belief as her daughter Kate speaks of the rich town ladies changing minds. The statement can be referred to Biblical text, Proverbs 11.4: “Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death.” And John 3.20: “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knowest all things.”(King James Version)

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“Now and then a fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it’s liable to strike anywhere, like lightning. I reckon it does take a powerful trust in the Lord to guard a fellow, though sometimes I think that Cora’s a mite over-cautious, like she was trying to crowd the other folks away and get in closer than anybody else. But then, when something like this happens, I reckon she is right and you got to keep after it and I reckon I am blessed in having a wife that ever strives for sanctity and well-doing like she says I am.” (16.21)

Tull ponders on the importance of faith.

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“One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.” (40.30)

Cora believes Addie’s only sin to be loving Jewel more than other children, and the punishment is the favorite child does not love her. Cora thinks Addie closes her heart to God; Addie views Jewel, the child she has from adultery, as the salvation and she knows more about sin.

Sources from:

http://www.shmoop.com/as-i-lay-dying/religion-theme.html

http://www.bookrags.com/notes/aild/TOP3.html

As I Lay Dying: What Reality Is

What reality is

The novel is narrated by 15 characters for 59 chapters, and each chapter consists of a monologue. When the narrators recount their experiences, the present and the past are mixed. Sometimes the readers are told of the past, but sometimes the readers participate in the novel’s immediate present. “Frequently, the monologues are simple descriptive reports of events and situations, supplemented with comments and emotional reactions. The occasional excursions into the past function as illustrations to the present state of affairs, and point up complete events, which are meaningful as themselves.”

Besides the family members and neighbors, some narrators are outsiders of the story that enable the readers to follow viewpoints without emotional attachment. All characters comment on the same external reality, and readers are always addressed to directly. Narrators are not aware of each others’ opinion as in interrupted monologue, but they are interrupted by the arrangement of text. Readers do not know what will happen next but always have a chance to compare the different perspectives and balance them. Readers decide the source as reliable or unreliable, and it is closer to the way we attain information in daily life if compared to traditional narration.

“The transmissions of reality in personal experiences are not made explicit, but are implicit in the difference between reality and experience of it.” It provides a sense that even though we know there may be misjudgment in appearance, still we can only approach to the appearance.

Source from:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/k6315x2716776u14/

As I Lay Dying: Characters

Addie Bundren

The wife of Anse Bundren and mother to Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman.

Addie is a mostly absent protagonist, and her death triggers the novel’s action. She is a former schoolteacher whose bitter, loveless life causes her to despise her husband and to invest all of her love in her favorite child, Jewel, rather than in the rest of her family or God.

Anse Bundren

The head of the Bundren family.

Anse is a poor farmer afflicted with a hunchback, whose instincts are overwhelmingly selfish. His poor childrearing skills seem to be largely responsible for his children’s various predicaments. Alternately hated and disrespected by his children, Anse nonetheless succeeds in achieving his two greatest goals in one fell swoop: burying his dead wife in her hometown of Jefferson, and acquiring a new set of false teeth.

Darl Bundren

The second Bundren child.

Darl is the most sensitive and articulate of the surviving Bundrens and delivers the greatest number of interior monologues in the novel. As the family encounters disaster upon disaster during the trip, Darl’s frustration with the whole process leads him to try to end things decisively by incinerating his dead mother’s coffin.

Jewel

The "bastard" child of Addie and Whitfield, the minister.

Though Darl seems to understand him, Jewel remains the novel’s greatest mystery, and is the least represented in its many sections. Jewel has a proud, fiercely independent nature that most of his family and neighbors confuse for selfishness. His passionate, brooding nature, however, reveals a real love and dedication to his mother, and he becomes a fierce protector of her coffin.

Cash Bundren

The eldest Bundren child and a skilled carpenter.

Cash is the paragon of patience and selflessness, almost to the point of absurdity. He refuses ever to complain about his broken, festering leg, allowing the injury to degenerate to the point that he may never walk again. Cash emerges as one of the novel’s few consistently stable characters.

Dewey Dell Bundren

The only Bundren daughter.

Dewey Dell is seventeen, and a recent sexual experience has left her pregnant. Increasingly desperate, she finds her mind occupied exclusively with her pregnancy, and views all men with varying degrees of suspicion.

Vardaman Bundren

The youngest of the Bundren children.

Vardaman has a lively imagination, and he views his mother’s death through the same lens with which he views a fish he has recently caught and cleaned. Although his ramblings at the beginning of the novel border on the maniacal, Vardaman proves to be a thoughtful and innocent child.

Vernon Tull

The Bundrens’ wealthier neighbor.

Tull is both a critic of and an unappreciated help to the Bundrens. He hires Darl, Jewel, and Cash for odd jobs, and helps the family cross the river in spite of its overt hostility toward him. Tull and his wife Cora, however, are critical of the Bundrens’ decision to bury Addie’s body in Jefferson.

Cora Tull

Vernon Tull’s wife.

Cora stays with Addie during Addie’s final hours. A deeply religious woman and pious to a fault, Cora frequently and vocally disapproves of Addie’s impiety and behavior.

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source from:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/asilay/canalysis.html#Addie-Bundren

As I Lay Dying: Theme of Family

Theme of Family in As I Lay Dying

Poor or no communication creates intense barriers of misunderstanding and resentment between family members, but particularly siblings who are rivals for their mother’s love. An illegitimate child further complicates an already tense set of relationships. Personal needs trump familial duties, though these selfish acts are masked with the pretense of devotion. For women, family is particularly painful, since it essentially assigns child-bearing as their sole purpose in life.

1) The novel begins as Addie Bundren's sons work for her dying wishes. Her eldest son, Cash, is perpetually working on her coffin, sawing outside for everyone to see. All of their actions seem to be with Addie's desires in mind.

2) Anse does not want to upset his dying wife and plans to honor her dying wishes in any way possible. Jewel and Darl do leave on a job, but plan to return the following evening so that they can be with their mother before she passes away.

3) Anse is bitter and frustrated over his wife's current ill condition and is concerned over his sons' actions in terms of their mother. He blames the roads for Addie's illness. He knows that they are difficult boys, but praises Addie simultaneously for doing the bestjob she could in raising them.

4) The Bundren family says their final goodbyes to their beloved mother. Addie cries out for Jewel, only to discover that her so-called devoted son is not present. Cash comes to her bedside and Dewey Dell drapes her body over her dying mother to show the love and necessity she feels for her.

5) The family works hard in order to set up everything perfectly for their mother's final wish. Cash has made a personalized coffin that Addie can lie in properly in her wedding dress, and prepares the wagon especially for the journey.

6) Anse explains his promise to Addie to his host, Samson. Most outsiders do not understand the Bundren persistence in traveling to Jefferson in such terrible weather. Anse, however, cares nothing about others' opinions and vows to honor his late wife's last wish despite all obstacles.

Sources from:

http://www.shmoop.com/as-i-lay-dying/family-theme.html

http://www.bookrags.com/notes/aild/TOP1.html