As I Lay Dying

1. As I Lay Dying Themes, Symbols, and Authors Bio Laura Goldberg, Aly Beauregard, Marina Merrell, John Christopher, Jeff LeCates, and Karl Gruber

2. Symbols • Fish • Represents Addie Bundren in Vardaman’s eyes • Animals • Jewel’s devotion to his horse. • Dewey Dell calls the cow a woman. • Coffin • Stands for death • Internal conflicts within the family • Tools • Represent’s Cash’s love for his mother and also the fact that Anse had to sell the tools he needed to keep his family alive in order to proceed with the burial trip.

3. Themes • Mortality • Delivery of Addie Bundren's body to Jefferson • Stinking corpse and fat buzzards always following close behind • Addie is disturbed constantly in her rest • Even after death, her body suffers a number of new indignities.

4. Themes • Obligation • Family fulfilling Addie’s wish to be buried in Jefferson • Anse and Addie’s duty and obligation to each other • Anse contradicts the true obligation and devotion • New woman less than 2 weeks after Addie’s death • Turns in Darl to an institution out of selfishness, forgetting his duty to his family.

5. Themes • Existence • Vardaman compares his mother to a fish that he had caught. • Fish: Fish to “pieces of not-fish” • Addie’s death • Addie: Person to corpse • Darl believes since his mother no longer exists he cannot exist. • Anse calls his new wife “Mrs. Bundren”, formerly Addie’s name, showing how a person can truly cease to exist.

6. Themes • Family dysfunction • Instability • Resentment • Siblings rivalries for their mother’s love • Illegitimate child (Jewel) • The fact that child-bearing is looked as women's only purpose. • Acts as almost a death to them • Dewey Dell & Addie • Selfish acts are falsely portrayed with the pretense of devotion

7. Biography of William Faulkner

8. William Faulkner • Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi then moved to Oxford, Mississippi days before he turned five. • Joined the British Royal Air Force as a cadet pilot under training in Canada, but the November 1918 armistice prevented him from finishing ground school. • Spent much of his time writing stories in his barn in Oxford • Short height of 5’5”. • Mississippi marked his characterization of usual Southern characters and his timeless themes. • One being that fiercely intelligent people dwelled behind the facade of typical Southern “Good ole boys” • Born as William Falkner but an editor misspelled his name as "Faulkner", and he decided to keep the spelling.

9. William Faulkner • Set many of his short stories and novels in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, where his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi sits. • Yoknapatawpha was his very own creation and it is considered to be one of the most monumental fictional creations in the history of literature. • In his later years, Faulkner moved to Hollywood to be a screenwriter. • Had a very known drinking problem

10. William Faulkner • Awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1949. • Donated his Nobel winnings, "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers“ • Resulting in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. • Faulkner's most celebrated novels include: • The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), The Unvanquished (1938), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). • Served as Writer-In-Residence at the University of Virginia from 1957 until his death in 1962.

11. Yacona River Bridge “This covered bridge over the Yocona River, photographed in the early 1900s, was one of several covered bridges in Lafayette County. Old maps depict the slow, muddy river as the "Yockney-patafa" River, from which Faulkner derived the name of his fictional county. A mule-drawn team such as the one depicted brings to mind the ill-fated crossing of the flooded Yoknapatawpha River in Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying.” –olemiss.edu