As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying

Analysis of first Passage

As I Lay Dying hails not only as a voyeuristic eye into the rural slums of Mississippi, but as a pastoral novel and staunch examination of humanity under duress. Despite its mixed reactions amongst critics and readers, Faulkner's powerful novel delivers several universal messages including the fact that "Man's capacity to spend himself in a cause is always a remarkable thing and nowhere more so than when it springs from an unlikely soil" . Because of Faulkner's ability to express these themes in novel methods, As I Lay Dying hails as one of the classics of American literature.

The Bundren children show their grief in quite disparate ways, but these reactions can be broken into two rudimentary categories: physical and mental. Darl lives entirely in the realm of the mind, and almost never expresses emotion. He is so bent on rationalizing events that he refuses to acknowledge that his mother even exists anymore. Dewey Dell finds her similarly lost in thought, although she appears to place the loss of her mother completely second to her own fears and sexual longings. In fact, for Dewey Dell, the possibility that a life is lurking inside her is more frightening than the idea of death. Cash, on the other hand, lives in a world that is entirely physical. He copes with, or ignores, the death of his mother by absorbing himself in the construction of her coffin. This fixation with building does not stop when the coffin is finished, and we see Cash fretting over the imbalance of the coffin and bringing his toolbox to the funeral. Cash's manner throughout the turmoil of Addie's death is incredibly deliberate, and it seems fitting that he acquires a limp, the perfect physical complement to his slow, stunted approach to all things emotional.

Vardaman and Jewel, however, come close to finding a middle ground between these extremes. Jewel's reaction to Addie's death is highly emotional. He almost single-handedly muscles the coffin into the wagon, and loudly curses his various siblings—actions that indicate a very strong physical and mental reaction. Moreover, Jewel displays great determination in refusing to ride with his family and in the speed with which he rushes by the rest of the Bundrens on his horse. Darl's equation of Jewel's mother with a horse certainly parallels the thinking of Vardaman, who tries to cope with the complexities of what his mother's death means to him. Vardaman's reactions are largely mental efforts, but his earlier beating of Peabody's horses, and the fact that he returns to the bog to catch another fish, demonstrate that he too reacts to things on a physical level. If the siblings' reactions do find common ground, it is because each singles out one object or issue through which to filter Addie's death: Darl with questions of existence, Jewel with horses, Vardaman with fish, Cash with his carpentry, and Dewey Dell with her sexuality.

The Bundrens' tendency to translate Addie's death into a different ...