As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying is a novel by American author William Faulkner, published in 1930. It is one of the many novels that Faulkner set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha county, Mississippi. It follows the Bundrens, a “poor white” Southern family, as they make their slow and difficult way to Jefferson, Mississippi, to bury the family matriarch’s decaying corpse. The novel famously employs a stream-of-consciousness technique, a style pioneered by Faulkner and other Modernist writers.

The story unfolds by means of fragmented and intercut narration by each of the characters. These include:

• Addie Bundren, the family matriarch to whom the “I” in the book’s title refers
• her husband, Anse
• their sons, Cash, Darl, and Vardaman
• their daughter, Dewey Dell
• Jewel, Addie’s “illegitimate” (and favorite) son

Addie watches from her deathbed as Cash builds her coffin. Upon her death, the family, under the direction of small-minded and ineffectual Anse, endeavors for once to respect Addie’s wishes and transport her to her hometown for burial. The rest of the novel is an account of the family’s journey and of the fates of the individual members of the family. Notably, there are chapters that follow Addie’s interior monologue even after she dies.

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Guess the Book by its Chapter Titles

Along with stream of consciousness, As I Lay Dying experiments with dialect and chapter length; one chapter reads, in its entirety, “My mother is a fish.”

The novel is considered a classic example of the Southern gothic, as well as one of Faulkner’s major works.