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As I Lay Dying, a la Shmoop. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is the

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story of the Bundren family traveling to bury their dead mother.

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It would have been a very different story had they tried to bury her alive. Which is

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kinda what the title seems to suggest… This novel stands out [1] from the stacks

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of dusty old classics because it is told from the perspective of fifteen different characters.

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Basically, it’s like the fourth season of Arrested Development in novel form.

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So what’s more important in As I Lay Dying – the content… or its form?

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The content’s pretty solid. The family’s journey follows one of the seven basic plot

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types: the quest.

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It may not be as glamorous as a quest for the holy grail, but there’s just as much

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peril. One terrible thing after another happens to

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the Bundrens…

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…Dead mother.

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…Guy with a broken leg.

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...The toothless dude.

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…A sister who is unwed and pregnant.

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Yeah, they all get along like a barn on fire.

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Oh yeah… there’s one of those, too. As if there wasn’t enough going on, Faulkner’s

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unique form complicates things quite a bit.

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With fifteen different narrators telling the story in fifty-nine stream-of-consciousness

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sections, the story goes forward, backward, counterclockwise, and upside down.

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Faulkner isn’t throwing this many characters at us just for fun…

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Like a synchronized diver, Faulkner is all about form…

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…and he’s using this complicated structure to remind us that all observation is in the

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eye of the beholder… and narration is always subjective.

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But don’t try to separate the form from the content, or the whole thing falls apart.

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See, Faulkner is writing a modernist novel, and modernism pretty much hinges on having

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no reliable narrator, no clear protagonist, and no certainty for the reader as to what

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is going on or whom to trust.

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With all that nothingness going on, we’re surprised there’s a book at all.

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Form and content go hand in hand, like peanut butter and pickles. Don’t judge us.

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If we had a straightforward story about a family funeral, it wouldn’t be the same

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book.

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Neither would it be the same if we had fifteen people rambling on about how rich they are

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and how perfect their lives are. So what’s more in important in As I Lay

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Dying?

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Is it the form?

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Is it the content?

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Or do we need both for it to be a true modernist novel?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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[1]Stands out from what?

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