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.