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Though Anse\'s wife, Addie, is given only one monologue, her presence, even in death, dominates the novel. Born and raised in Jefferson, her father taught her that the purpose of living is to prepare for death. Her parents were dead and she was teaching school when she met Anse. She married him--\"I took Anse,\" she said--in hopes of making the sort of intense, violent contact with another person that would give her life meaning.
Anse couldn ... mehr
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Cash, at 29 or 30 Addie\'s oldest son, is a carpenter. His name is short for Cassius. His mother loved him, and he returns that love, painstakingly crafting her coffin outside her window in the opening scenes. A recognizable country type, his unexpected responses--to pain, for example, and to a question about the height of his fall from a church roof--are a source of humor. At the end of the book, his insights into the family relationships and Da ... mehr
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Jewel, Addie\'s son by Whitfield, is 18 years old. Like Pearl, the product of Hester Prynne\'s adulterous affair in Nathaniel Hawthorne\'s novel The Scarlet Letter, Jewel\'s name is a symbol of the value his mother places on him. The favoritism that Addie showed him is responsible for the antagonism between him and Darl.
A blend of inarticulateness and action, Jewel personifies Addie\'s preference for experience over words. He is always in m ... mehr
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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 populat ... mehr
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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 differ ... mehr
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Faulkner is a difficult writer. His style--the way he expresses things--is often closer to poetry than to prose. Like a poet, he tries to capture the emotion of an experience as well as the experience itself.
Faulkner deliberately withholds meaning to keep his options open, to keep his story in motion. In the opening section, for instance, he describes an odd competition between Darl and Jewel but never tells you whether it really is a compe ... mehr
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As I Lay Dying is made up of a succession of first-person narratives, with the action seen and interpreted by fifteen characters. The narrators are subjective--they convey their own feelings and thoughts as well as report the action. None of them is detached from the action for long.
Seven of the narrators are Bundrens, totally caught up in the events and unable to make complete sense of them. Darl never ceases to try, however, and Cash gain ... mehr
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As I Lay Dying is divided into 59 soliloquies, or interior monologues--the characters\' thoughts expressed as if they were spoken. They are delivered by 15 different people.
The basic plot and the controlling image of the novel is that of a journey--in this case, the journey from the Bundrens\' home to the cemetery plot in Jefferson. As some readers have pointed out, the story echoes many of the well-known journeys in history and myth. The s ... mehr
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Not numbering the 59 monologues is Faulkner\'s effective way of suggesting continuous action, but it makes any section-by-section discussion of the novel difficult. To eliminate that problem, you might want to number the monologues in your own copy of the novel to make it easier to match your text with the discussion that follows.
1. DARL
In this opening section, Faulkner carefully establishes the setting of As I Lay Dying and introduces ... mehr
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The use of a wide range of viewpoints gives moral as well as narrative perspective, offers scope for rich ironic effects, and broadens the sense of social reality.... The technique of the novel represents, of course, a tour de force of conception as well as of execution, and in his determination to avoid any authorial intrusion Faulkner perhaps allowed a certain dilution of the tensions arising from the internal psychological dramas of his majo ... mehr
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Nothing so permeates the tone and texture of the story as does the spirit of the Old Testament. The themes, the attitudes, and frequently the very words and prose rhythms derive from the written account of the \"pre-Christian\" experience. Specifically, the story as a whole has strong overtones of the Book of Job. Salvation, religiosity, tribal solidarity, the importance of sex as an almost religious act--these and other Old Testament themes as ... mehr
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After the reader has marveled at Faulkner\'s experimentations in As I Lay Dying, there is no need to be stricken into critical silence by it. The total effect is disappointing; the inadequacy of the characterizations fails to arouse our sympathies and compassions; the ending makes us feel as though we had been tricked into caring at all; the artistry seems glib when compared with the uses of the same technical procedures in [Faulkner\'s] The So ... mehr
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... [Each] private world manifests a fixed and distinctive way of reacting to and ordering experience. Words, action, and contemplation constitute the possible modes of response, while sensation, reason, and intuition form the levels of consciousness. All of these combine to establish a total relationship between the individual and his experience; for certain of the characters in As I Lay Dying, however, this relationship is fragmented and dist ... mehr
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As I Lay Dying is a fable not only about Addie\'s quest for salvation but about the testing of three sons by the ordeals of water and fire. Their crossing of the flooded river with the mother\'s corpse is the first test.... Darl came out of the water with empty hands, Cash with the horse (the substitute for the mother), and Jewel with the prize-the coffin. The rescue of the coffin may be interpreted in two ways: it signifies the living mother ... mehr
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A novel
About the author:
William Golding was born in Cornwall, England, in 1911 as a teacher's son. After his graduation from Oxford in science and English in 1935 he joined the Royal Navy and took part in the Second World War.
Golding returned to teaching in 1945 and worked part time in small theatre companies as writer, actor and director.
"Lord Of The Flies", which brought him to international fame, was rejected by several publishers ... mehr
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1., Novel William Golding \"Lord of the Flies\"
2., Author William Golding
He was born in 1911 in Cornwall, England.
He studied literature at Oxford;
later earning his money as a schoolmaster;
joined the Royal Navy in World War II, saw active duty through out the war
and ended as a lieutnant.
1954: Lord of the Flies, his first novel was published,
but did not become a bestseller until
... mehr
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Introduction
The story takes place on an unspoiled island that effectively isolates the characters from the rest of the world, especially the one of the grown-ups.
Golding creates a mini-world and by making us look closely at this nature, he wants to show us the whole real world and the conditions of humankind.
In my opinion the sea represents the vast distance between the group of children and the civilisation.
The sea is like a borde ... mehr
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THE AUTHOR
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway who bore him 3 children. Seven years later he came to London where he worked as actor, director, author and was leading member of the theatre-group, "Lord Chamberlain's Men". Soon he started an own career and his plays where that successful and famous among the population that Shakespeare became very rich and lived with his famil ... mehr
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LIFE:
Born on: 23 April 1564 place of birth: Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire
Died on: 23 April 1616 place of death: Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire
Information on:
His parents: Father John: respected middle-class trader;
Mother Mary Arden: from a family of local landowners
His education: fair education at the local Grammar School
His family: married with 18 to Anne Hathawa ... mehr
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Lady Macbeth has a conversation with her husband with the aim of convincing him to kill the king, Duncan, while he is their guest.
Just at the beginning of the scene, Macbeth holds a monologue, expressing his inner struggles about his cruel thoughts of murdering his king, showing his fear of the consequences. Then, after Lady Macbeth's enter, a conversation starts between her and her husband. Actually one couldn't talk about this scene ... mehr
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