Post 3

Even though it's been a long time since the last time I posted, not much has happened in the actual plot. The story is written through the first person view of each of the family members; Anse is the father, Cash is the eldest son, Dewey Dell is the only daughter, Darl and Jewel who are in constant competition, and Vardaman who is the youngest son. Every side character in the story also has a few chapters dedicated to them. The novel focuses more on what is running through the character's heads and how they are dealing with their mother, Addie Bundren's, death. There are also a few chapters from Addie's point of view after she has passed.

The entire novel is about the Bundren family's journey to bury their deceased mother, Addie, in the distant town of Jefferson. In their travels a bridge they need to cross collapses from a flood. There hasn't been a flood in the area for fifteen years, and the fact that it floods now when they need it most is taken as an omen. In an attempt to get their caravan across the river the wagon tips over and the coffin falls off. Darl rushes after the coffin while Cash gets kicked by the drowning horses and ends up with a broken leg. They stayed at farmer Armstid's barn for the night and Anse is looking to trade for another team of mules.

02 / 15 / 2008

I had ordered a copy of As I Lay Dying, along with a DVD of Gladiator, and received them both in the mail last week. I have only begun to read As I Lay Dying, but I am pleased with what I have read so far.

"Sawing knockin, and keeping the air always moving so fast on her face that when you're tired you cant breathe it, and that goddamn adze going One lick less. One lick less. One lick less until everybody that passes in the road will have to stop and see it and say what a fine carpenter he is. If it has just been me when Cash fell off that church and if it had just been me when pa laid sick with that load of wood fell on him it would not be happening with every bastard in the country coming in to stare at her because if there is a God what the hell is He for. It would just be me and her on a high hill and me rolling the rocks down the hill at their faces, picking them up and throwing them down the hill faces and teeth and all by God until she was quiet and not that goddamn adze going One lick less. One lick less and we could be quiet." (15)


I always enjoy it when writers use repetition to enforce a statement and or create a dramatic effect, as Faulkner does with "One lick less." His writing sometimes feels like poetry, especially in the previous passage. His writing is mimicking the way someone would think to themselves in the first person, which makes the novel interesting because it follows the first person views of six different characters.

American Author Proposal

I first found William Faulkner through a quote he made about Mark Twain, calling him the, “father of American literature.” I found that William Faulkner, although not as famous as Mark Twain, was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. I am really interested in his experimental style of writing, especially because his style of writing was so groundbreaking at the time. For example, in his novel As I Lay Dying, he wrote a chapter that contained only five words, which are “My mother is a fish.”

William Faulkner meets the criteria for the American Author project because his writings have influenced and inspired many other literature writers. He was born on September 25, 1897 in the state of Mississippi. His work was published regularly from the mid 1920s to the late 1940s, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 before he died on July 6, 1962. He wrote novels, film screenplays, short stories, and poetry. He was an alcoholic, but as William Faulkner himself, members of his family, and other various witnesses stated, he did not drink while writing, nor did he believe that alcohol helped to fuel the creative process. It seems to me that he had somewhat of a duality to him. He also had an affair for several years with a young writer named Joan Williams, who became the subject of his novel, The Wintering.

Besides his literary work that attracts me, his life seemed like an eventful one, yet filled with struggle. Inspiration for many of his stories came from his family history, so I imagine that reading biographies about him might be just as entertaining as his stories.

I was thinking of reading two of his novels, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!, and instead of reading a third novel I would read a compilation of his short stories and or poetry. If I need to read a third novel, I think I will read The Sound and the Fury. If there is any specific order that one should read those books in, I will probably change my order to follow that. I will most likely be able draw a thesis from similarities and plot connections between his books and short stories. I am not sure of anything remotely specific yet, but I believe that with such a collection of writing I won’t have trouble coming up with a thesis.