"Cliff Notes - As I Lay Dying" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

^^^^^^^^^^AS I LAY DYING: SKEET MACGOWAN [55]

MacGowan, a druggist's assistant in Jefferson, takes advantage of Dewey Dell's naivete and seduces her.


^^^^^^^^^^AS I LAY DYING: SETTING

As I Lay Dying takes place in or just outside Yoknapatawpha County, the "apocryphal kingdom" in northern Mississippi where 15 of Faulkner's 19 novels are set. Faulkner never disguised the fact that he modeled Yoknapatawpha after his own Lafayette County, where he lived for most of his life. Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha's county seat, is much like Oxford, Faulkner's hometown.

Yoknapatawpha is sparsely populated. Faulkner once put its population at 15,611, and its land area at 2400 square miles. The Bundrens' closest neighbors in the pine hills, the Tulls, live four miles away. One of the themes of As I Lay Dying is isolation-the isolation even of people who are united in a common effort. The distance between the farms in Yoknapatawpha's hill country advances that theme. The Tulls, Samsons, Armstids, and Bundrens are all part of the same community, yet each family operates within its own orbit, and within that orbit each individual lives locked in the "cell" of his own consciousness.

The Bundrens' journey to Jefferson takes them from the world of farmers and woodsmen to the world of storekeepers, mechanics, doctors and lawyers. The worlds are as different as day and night. Indeed, Faulkner suggests that the Yoknapatawpha River is a dividing line as significant to the Bundrens as the mythological River Styx was to the ancient Greeks. The River Styx, in Greek mythology, separated the world of the living from the world of the dead. Conflict between town and country folk is a motif that crops up throughout the novel.

Finding obstacles to put in the Bundrens' path wasn't difficult. "I simply imagined a group of people and subjected them to the simple universal natural catastrophes, which are flood and fire," Faulkner said in 1956. Rain and flood dominate the first two thirds of the book, adding to the Bundrens' stress and enabling Faulkner to study their response to crisis.

^^^^^^^^^^AS I LAY DYING: THEMES

Here is a list of the major themes that readers have found in As I Lay Dying. You will have a chance to explore them further in the section-by-section discussion of the novel. Some of these themes are contradictory. It is up to you to sort out those you think are valid from those you think invalid.

1. DEATH SHAPES LIFE

Addie, in death, motivates the living. She causes her family to bear the struggle of the Journey to Jefferson. Her different attitudes toward her children dictate their different responses to her death and prompt one--Jewel--to perform feats of heroism. The rivalry between Jewel and Darl continues long after Addie's death. Even her decaying corpse motivates the living--to flee.

2. LIFE IS ABSURD--A JOURNEY WITH NO MEANING

The purpose of the journey, from Addie's point of view, is revenge. But Anse isn't allowed to understand that. Nor is he perceptive enough to understand that the journey is senseless. He could have buried Addie at New Hope and bought false teeth another day. This interpretation was popular in the 1950s, especially among French Existentialists, members of a philosophical movement that holds the universe to be absurd.

3. HUMANS HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO BE INVOLVED WITH OTHERS

Some readers interpret Addie's longing for intense personal contact--her "duty to the alive, to the terrible blood"--as support for this theme. Such involvement with others gives meaning to existence. The help the Bundrens are given by their neighbors and the help they give each other demonstrate the importance of involvement.

4. ALL HUMANS LIVE IN SOLITUDE AND SOLIDARITY AT THE SAME TIME

We live in our own cells even while acting in unison with others to achieve a common goal--a goal as simple as moving a body about 40 miles to a cemetery. The 59 interior monologues that make up the novel are clear demonstrations of the cells in which individuals live. "Man is free and he is responsible, terribly responsible," Faulkner told an interviewer in 1959. "His tragedy is the impossibility--or at least the tremendous difficulty--of communication. But man keeps on trying endlessly to express himself and make contact with other human beings."

5. LANGUAGE IS VANITY WHILE ACTION--EVEN "SINFUL" ACTION--IS THE

^^^^^^^^^^AS I LAY DYING: TEST OF LIFE

This is a theme of great importance to Addie, for whom words are "just a shape to fill a lack." "Words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless," she says, while "doing goes along the earth, clinging to it...." In various ways, Anse, Cora, and Whitfield exemplify the emptiness of words when compared with action. On the other hand, the most inarticulate character in the novel, Jewel, is all motion. He expresses himself through action, not words.

6. TRUTH IS ELUSIVE, SINCE FACTS ARE SUBJECTIVE

Each of the novel's 15 narrators has a perspective on reality that may or may not be accurate. Is Darl sane or insane? Is Vardaman's mother a fish? Is Addie's sin, as Cora says, the sin of pride, and the log that struck the wagon "the hand of God"? Does Anse have some feeling, a lot of feeling, or no feeling toward Addie? Since Faulkner provides no narrator to help you sift through the various characters' perceptions, you are left to draw your own conclusions.

Readers have also identified several secondary themes in As I Lay Dying. Among them are the following.

1. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE POOR WHITE FARMERS AND THE TOWNSPEOPLE