As I Lay Dying

I'm going to honestly say that this novel made me, as a reader, want to die. It was a great attempt by Faulkner, just not a great delivery. Faulkner wrote this novel using stream of conscious allowing the characters in the novel to give their point of view. Many of the ideas in the novel were hard to catch on to especially the idea of the dying mother being a fish. I didn't understand why that was so. Anywho, I was also tired of the country setting which Faulkner seems to include in nearly every novel.

The characters in As I Lay Dying were not very interesting to me either. The only character I had an appreciation for was Dr. Peabody. He viewed the family the same way I do. He's able to point out the absurdity in the actions of others in the novel. For example, it was absurd that the mother was left in her room only to hear her son create her caufin. It's as if all of her family was waiting for her to die! Her husband also played a part in this theory as well. He was only concerned with their sons heading off to town soon enough to beat the storm so they could make money. Even though he said it was his wife's wishes to be buried in town, he was mainly concerned with the money he would be missing if they didn't make it there before the storm reached their area.

It is questionable if the woman's children and her husband loved her at all. I found myself asking this question when noticing the time and attention Cash gave to creating her cauffin but the little emotion he exhibited to the fact that it was for his dying mother. He seemed unmoved that his mother was inside their home hanging on to life. Their love for her was also questionable when I noticed that none of her children visited her often. She was only accompanied by a young woman taking care of her.

Faulkner did a great job with setting up an eerie and heartfelt setting, but the interesting aspects of the novel were lost. As a reader, I was unable to tap into the novel and really enjoy it. I felt like there was a lot going on but yet still not enough to make it interesting. Sorry.