As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – A Book Review

A woman lies dying, a mother, Addie Bundren. Outside her window, her eldest son, Cash hammers and saws on the coffin he is readying for her even before she is dead. Her other two sons step out to earn three dollars aware that they won’t be there when she breathes her last. The old man, Anse, her husband lies there on a chair complaining about his failing knees.

And then she is dead. Her favorite son Jewel is not around when she is dead neither is Darl as they had expected. She didn't want to be buried here, at this place but she wanted to lie beneath the earth at her folks place. So the journey begins to take a lifeless body, a long gone wife, a detached mother to Jefferson, miles away where she wished to be buried. But there has been a relentless rain and the bridges over the river have been washed away by the flood. So the decrepit cart is turned through another town but cross one of the rivers they must. As they challenge the river on the ford, the cart succumbs and the mules are fat and dead with their peeping legs at the surface of the angry river. The coffin is afloat and the brothers are barely able to save it and themselves and Cash, the eldest son damages his leg when the cart falls over him.

For ten long days, the family, at the arrogance of Anse Bundren, the father, drifts with the soiled, smelly and decaying body towards Jefferson as the buzzards circle the sky in anticipation.

And is that all? Yes and no! Written in a manner in which Faulkner dedicates each chapter to each character and the voices are their own, there is a shameful past of the dead woman, the instability of Darl, the pigheadedness of Anse the father, the rebellion of Jewel to live with the family yet stay apart, the secret of the daughter Dewey Dell and was Anse’s rush and determination to bury the body in Jefferson truly from the love of his wife or was it a contrivance at the cost of his family

            There is a considerable amount of rawness in the characters and the writing as each character reveals their perspective and contributes to the happenings. I felt the story being dragged relentlessly by the unheeding mules of repetition. I neither loved the characters nor hated them apart from the thick headed bigoted Anse Bundren, the father. And there is no comic relief, unless you call the ignorant and ghastly cementing of Cash’s injured leg as humor. William Faulkner, to me, simply presented the characters and left the deciphering to the reader which is not a crime at all but I just couldn't register the greatness of this critically acclaimed piece of American literature, nor did the language appease me. Sorry Mr.Faulkner!

           

 My Rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 5/10

William Faulkner