As I Iay Dying 读书报告.doc

A Book Report of As I Lay DyingAbstract: As I lay dying describes that a farmer according to the will of his dead wife command his family to send her coffin to her family cemetery in Jefferson and bury her there. It is irony epic and a fantastic comedy. Faulkner taunts the ugly side of human nature of south farmers, and affirms their weight on acting in good faith. Apart from humor, there is grave of ridicule with a serious tragedy meaning. The novel also reflects that Faulkner emphasizes his consistent experimental . The book is divided into 59 sections. Every section is a characters heart monologue, showing their personality. Key words: plot; techniques; comment; themesAs I Lay Dying is a novel by the American author William Faulkner. Faulkner wrote it while working at a power plant, published in 1930, and described it as a tour-de-force. It is Faulkners fifth novel and consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th century literature. The title derives from Book XI of Homers The Odyssey, wherein Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus: As I lay dying, the woman with the dogs eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades.The novel is known for its stream of consciousness writing technique, multiple narrators, and varying chapter lengths. 1Plot Summary The book is told by 15 different narrators in 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her familys quest noble or selfish to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. As is the case in much of Faulkners work, the story is set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, which Faulkner referred to as my apocryphal county, a fictional rendering of the writers home of Lafayette County in that same state. The Bundren family lives on their farm in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional rural county in Mississippi. They are incredibly poor, and the clan matriarch, Addie Bundren, is nearing death. Cash, the oldest son of the family, is a carpenter. As a last gift to his mother, he makes a coffin for her outside the window of the room where she lies dying. Anse, the familys stupid and weak patriarch, sends two sons, Darl and Jewel, on a lumber shipping job that will net the family a few extra dollars. Darl and Jewel set off, Darl knowing that it means he will not be present for his mothers death. Midtrip, they have an accident, and are forced to turn back; but Addie Bundren has already died.Cash completes the coffin and they hold a funeral service. Darl and Jewel set off again. Dewey Dell, the only girl of the family, nurses her own secrets: she is pregnant, and will seek an abortion in town. Vardaman, the youngest child, is traumatized horribly by his mothers death, and continues to confuse her with the fish he caught and killed earlier that same day. Darl and Jewel return, and the family sets off to transport the body to Jefferson. It was Addies longstanding wish to be buried among her birth family there.Storms have made the journey difficult. The bridges are washed away, and after a night at Samsons farm the Bundrens end up having to backtrack to find a fordable part of the river. The stench is becoming more noticeable, and buzzards follow the wagon. The attempted crossing is disastrous: Cashs leg is broken, and he nearly drowns. The mules are killed. But Jewel manages to save the coffin from floating away downstream.The Bundrens take shelter at Armstids farm. To buy new mules, Anse sells Jewels horse behind Jewels back. The stench of the body is becoming stronger, and the family sets off in a hurry.In Mottson, Dewey Dell tries unsuccessfully to find a druggist who will give her an abortion treatment. Meanwhile, the family has trouble with the sheriff, due to the horrifying stench of the body, and the Bundrens buy cement to make a cast for Cashs leg.The Bundrens seek shelter at the Gillespie farm. No longer able to stand what is happening to the body, Darl sets fire to the barn in which the coffin is housed. Jewel manages to save the coffin, but the barn burns to the ground. Meanwhile, Cashs leg is clearly seriously injured, and the cement cast has only made matters worse.The next day, they arrive in Jefferson and bury Addie. Because of arrangements made by his family, Darl is captured and taken off to a mental institution in Jackson. Cash sees Peabody, the county doctor, who does the best he can for the damage leg. Dewey Dell is fooled by a shop assistant, and ends up trading sex for a bogus abortion treatment. Anse, his wife just recently buried, finds a new wife in town. As the Bundrens are setting off to return home, he brings the woman out and introduces her as his new bride. 2Literary Techniques Throughout the novel, Faulkner presents fifteen different points of view, each chapter narrated by one character, including Addie, who, after dying, expresses her thoughts from the coffin. In 59 chapters titled only by their narrators names, the characters are developed gradually through each others perceptions and opinions, Darls predominating.The one chapter narrated by Addie Bundren helped bring issues of feminism and motherhood in literature to the fore, as her voice is clearly expressed only after her death. Except for Jewel and Cash, Addie either dislikes or acts dismissively toward all her children. Jewel and Cash are profoundly affected by her regard for them.Addies chapter helps to understand Addie as more than a traditional portrayal of a woman as villainous, incompetent, unfulfilled, or dead, and portrays her as revengeful and deliberate. The chapter discusses her hatred of the students she teaches and her disloyalty and lack of love for her husband Anse. Therefore Addies requests as she dies including her desire to be buried in Jefferson (which was quite far away) represents her deceit and her ability to control her family on her death bed and in death. This portrays Addie as a feminist figure and more than a traditional literary woman.3Comment on the NovelThe structure of As I Lay Dying is powerful and innovative. Fifteen narrators alternate, delivering interior monologues with varying degrees of coherence and emotional intensity. The language is intense and highly subjective, with a recognizable change in language depending on the narrator. Each section falls somewhere in the range from confessional to stream-of-consciousness. The novel is a series of interior monologues, and through these fragmented passages we piece together the story of Addie Bundrens death and the transport of her body to Jefferson. The narrative appears fragmentary, but the story demonstrates admirable unity: it is limited to the span of a few days, and the different sub-plots are logically and skillfully interwoven. Faulkners innovation is in how we see this unified set of events: we are forced to look at the story from a number of different perspectives, each of which is highly subjective. Among Faulkners achievements, in this novel and elsewhere, was the rendering of the vernacular of the South into poetic literary language. The Bundrens live in Faulkners fictional community of Yoknapatawpha County, a setting used in many of his novels, and they are among the poorest characters in all of Faulkners work. 4Major Themes4.1IsolationFaulkners structure is particularly suitable for the theme of isolation. The characters exist within their own series of interior monologues; we encounter each character, alone with their secret longings and fears. With many characters, we are struck by their loneliness. Darls isolation is the most poetic and the most tragic. He is a powerfully intuitive observer, but his sensitivity and brilliance often isolate from others. He views his siblings with a paradoxically mixed attitude swerving from empathy and loyalty to supreme and insensitive detachment. 4.2DutyObligation is an important theme of the novel. The family is bringing Addies body to Jefferson, to bury her as she wished to be buried. There is much talk about duty. Addie herself speaks of duty regarding her relationship to Anse; to hear her speak of it, duty is a joyless but necessary part of life. Anse, too, constantly speaks of his duty to Addie, and the need to bury the body where she wished it to be buried. But duty seems somewhat fragile. Anse takes up with a new woman less than two weeks after Addies death. And in terms of duty, the ties within the Bundren family fray rather quickly when it comes time to turn in Darl. 4.3BeingBoth Vardaman and Darl are taken by questions of being, consciousness, and identity. His mothers death has only added confusion to these questions; Vardaman cannot understand how something that is can become was. Darls musings veer between striking eloquence and a kind of elegant crudeness. Darl engages in intense sessions of questioning, in which he examines the foundations of being and consciousness. These questions take on a tragic significance when Darl loses his mind, and his concept of himself is completely undermined. 5One Important Quotation “Jewels mother is a horse,” Darl said.“Then mine can be a fish, cant it, Darl?” I said. . .“Then what is your ma, Darl?” I said.“I havent got ere one,” Darl said. “Because if I had one, it is was. And if it was, it cant be is. Can it?”Explanation： Vardamans equation, in Section 24, of his mothers death with the fishs death at first seems a childish, illogical connection. This association, however, along with Darls linking of the question of existence to a matter of “was” versus “is,” allows these two uneducated characters to tackle the highly complex matters of death and existence. The bizarre nature of this exchange epitomizes the Bundrens inability to deal with Addies death in a rational way. For Darl, language has a peculiar control over Addies existence: he b