For example, Faulkner’s mother was an intelligent and educated woman who married an unsuccessful and apathetic man, just like Addie married Anse. Inspirationįaulkner stated that he wrote “As I Lay Dying” from midnight to 4 AM over the course of 6 weeks and that he did not change a word of the initial manuscript, describing this experience as a “tour de force”.ĭuring the post-reading research I also found out that certain elements of the story were inspired by Faulkner’s background. This proved very useful along the way, as I often felt the need of checking the map to be sure I understand whose perspective I was reading. In order to solve the confusion that arose after reading the first few chapters, I did a little bit of research about the characters (without spoilers!), so I knew who is who, and I created a simple relationship map. Maybe if English was my native language then reading would have gone smoother … There were details that I totally missed, and I luckily found out about them during my post-reading research. Given that each narrator had a limited point of view compared to the big picture of the story, and that each character also had internal tumultuous thoughts that were reflected in his/her stream of consciousness, things got quite fuzzy at times.
The definition might sound clear, but in practice things are not so clear … I personally encountered many issues related to understanding what is happening, as the language used by Faulkner was very authentic and it also reflected the characters’ social background and education level. “stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind” (J.
Faulkner dives deep into the minds of his characters by using only first-person narrators – 15 narrators with a total of 59 chapters (internal monologues), to be precise – in what was an experimental narration technique at that time: streams of consciousness. While the storyline itself is quite simple, the narration tools used by the author complicate the reading experience. The Bundren family on their way to bury their mother/wife.
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