Selected Works of Faulkner Series: as I Lay Dying
by G
About This Novel
"As I Lay Dying" is one of the important novels of Faulkner's "Yoknapatawpha". It was published in 1930 and made Faulkner famous in one fell swoop. The novel consists of fifty-nine stanzas of inner monologues, telling from multiple perspectives the "suffering journey" of Bendren, a farmer in the southern United States, who leads his family to transport his wife's body back to his hometown for burial in order to keep his promise to his wife. The entire ten-day trip was full of disasters: the water almost washed away the coffin, the mule pulling the cart drowned, and the fire almost incinerated the body. As a result, the eldest son lost a foot, the second son went to jail for setting fire to a barn, the third son lost his beloved horse, the daughter failed to have an abortion but was bullied by the pharmacy clerk, and the mentally retarded younger son did not get the little train he longed for, while Bundren got dentures and married a new wife. The whole novel constitutes a true picture of the challenges to the poverty, backwardness and traditional moral values of the American South after the Civil War, and is a metaphor for the sufferings of real life.
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