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SCRIBBLE
illiam Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930) is an explorative piece written in one of the most turbulent periods of American history during – The Great Depression. Faulkner saw his novel as an opportunity to resist against the pressure of writing for commercial purposes (as a result of the tough economic conditions) and instead, wrote during a creative burst over a six-week period whilst working in a power plant. The novel is set in 1920’s Mississippi – the state of his birth – in the fictional region of Yoknapatawpha county, which features in many of his novels. Unlike his previous novel, The Sound and the Fury (1929) which focussed on the declining aristocracy following the reconstruction of the South in the aftermath of the Civil War, Faulkner follows an impoverished family on its journey to bury their dead mother, Addie, in her home town of Jefferson in order to fulfil her final wishes. The novel’s name borrows from Homer’s Odyssey and echoes the journey taken by the protagonist. However, the parallel can extend to the entirety of the novel, which is about a quest to Jefferson, where the reader enters a turbulent voyage into each character’s mind, exploring their own psyche through the struggles along the way. This level of intimate exploration is reached due to Faulkner’s use of modernist techniques of stream of conscience and multiple focalizations from each of the characters, allowing the reader to explore family dynamics. However, while Homer’s Odyssey ends in a satisfactory completion, Faulkner’s ending leaves characters in a state of trauma, fractured by their experiences and the futility of their heroism and stoicism
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aulkner wrote as part of the Southern Renaissance movement, which aimed to challenge the glorification and nostalgia of the “old” South and its role in the Civil. It aimed to critique Southern Conservatism by exposing the true conditions under reconstruction, racism and the rigid class system which remained despite the abolishment of slavery. However, writers of the Southern Renaissance were uniquely existentialists, questioning what it meant to have an identity beyond religion and family which formed the foundations of Southern conservatism. As I Lay Dying is an excellent example of writing from this movement as it deeply explores identity within the rural and impoverished reality of the rural South. The poverty was the result of the deterioration of the South after the Civil War and further suffering through the Great Depression – eventually, one quarter of land owned by Mississippi farmers was sold off in order to pay the
taxes that had become unaffordable as a result of the financial crash. In the novel, the death of Addie and the suffering experienced by characters alongside the progressive destruction of Addie’s coffin on the journey to Jefferson all contribute to the question on the futility of living and questions the presence of God in a world that endures suffering.
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here is a contrast between Cora and Addie, the former being devoutly religious. Addie is someone who observes Cora’s blind faith as naivety when she declares “sin and love and fear are just
sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had”.
Addie’s lack of faith stems from her disillusionment with the life she has been promised – she is driven only by her love for her son Jewel and resentment of her husband, creating a moral dilemma for the reader. The doomed quest to Jefferson is a selfish request; an act of final revenge against her husband, Anse, ironically backfires as it is her children who endure the greatest suffering, while Anse remains relatively unscathed. A religious parallel forms between Cash and Christ, as he sacrifices the use of his leg and his money for a gramophone to ensure the coffin reaches Jefferson. He acts as a figure of morality in the family as unlike them he doesn’t resent the situation, silently enduring the pain of a broken leg , described as “immobilized as if nailed to a cross.” In this way Faulkner, further affirms himself as a Southern renaissance writer as he challenges the glorification of the Southern soldier’s cause – the themes of futility of actions as well as critiquing the conservative religion in the South, despite Faulkner being a Christian himself. Faulkner and the other renaissance writers’ revolutionary idea to challenge such principles in the South, led the poet, Allen Tate, to state that the term “renaissance” with regards to the movement was a misnomer “as it was more precisely a birth, not a rebirth” as no such literature had risen so explicitly out of the region previously.
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aulkner’s use of multiple focalisers allows the reader to explore family dynamics under strain, from different generational perspectives as well as including external views on the family’s actions. Tull and Cora criticise Addie’s ludicrous request as well as Anse’s idleness while his family bears the burden of his poor decisions, which the family members cannot see due to their close relationships. However, most significantly the authorial technique grants the reader intimate access to each characters’ desires and rivalries. The haunting final image of Anse strolling down the
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