The field is completely open for the reader to speculate and interpret the stories.Ĭombined with the controversial geographical position of the stories – South of the United States – the book creates a vast number of possible interpretations. Their mother, Addie Bundren, is dying, one of the sons is making her a coffin in their yard, and once she passes away, they take off on a trip to the nearest town to bury her.ĭuring the trip we find out numerous details of the family life and wrongdoings: Addie’s affair with a minister who is the father of her son Jewel, her daughter Dewey is pregnant from an affair with a local farmer and is trying to buy an abortion pill at every pharmacy they pass through, her son Darl burns down the barn they are spending the night at just to get rid of the stinking coffin.īy removing the author from the text it is not easy to clarify what exactly the character means, where he finds himself at the moment or what reasons might have caused him to do and say what he did. The characters are members of the Bundren family who each have their own preoccupations and views on what is going on around them. The only narrators in the book are his fifteen characters that tell fifty-nine stories from their perspective. He achieved that by removing himself as an author from the text completely. When writing “As I Lay Dying”, he invested a lot of thoughts and planning into making it clear and concise in form, yet deep and fascinating in meaning. Experimenting with different forms and literary maneuvers, he created new ways to deliver a message and not once managed to surprise the reader. William Faulkner has earned himself a title of the frontman of the modern literature.

Author as i lay dying