Zero Draft AILD

·      As I Lay Dying is a modernist experiment in psychoanalytic literature focusing on how a family deals with the passing of the matriarch.

o   “Each of the Bundrens is concerned with Addie’s death and with her funeral, events which are by no means identical… Thus, it is Addie not as a mother, corpse, or promise but as an element in the blood of her children who dominates and shapes the complex psychological reactions.” (237)

o   In its simplest explanation grief has five stages:

§  Denial/Isolation occurs when a person pretends as though there is nothing to grieve and pushes those closest to them away in order to avoid grief

§  Anger results from the newly realized grief when a person finally comes to terms with loss

§  Bargaining/power-play are social elements one uses in order to make exceptions and replacements for what was lost

§  Depression results from the person realizing that there is no alternative to what was lost and their grief must commence

§  Acceptance is, therefore, the end all to grief. It is the point which a person has realized that there is no alternative and makes the decision to move forward with their own life

·      Anse Bundren is a reluctant patriarch incapable of accepting that his wife is dead. Denial, Isolation

o   Anse is the only character to portray socially appropriate mourning “His face tragic and composed, he easily makes the proper responses to condolences and recites his litany of grief, though somewhat marred by his irrepressible egotism” (Vickery 237); however his eagerness for new teeth and to replace his bride illustrate his avoidance of the real issue.

o   He acts very well adjusted, but under guise of fulfilling Addie’s wishes he isolates his children, dragging them through a funeral procession of hell.

·      Darl Bundren is an intelligent veteran whose depression over mother’s death results in deep psychosis. Depression

o   In the first scene of the funeral procession, when they have arrived in town, Darl is just sitting in the wagon laughing (61)

§  Progressively, this already strange character, grows ever stranger

o   Burns down the barn (126), institutionalized, sitting at a window thinking in 3^rd person, saying, “yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes” (146)

·      Jewel Bundren is a headstrong, emotionless man very attached to his horse, suffering from extreme anger over the death of his mother. Denial, Anger

o   Upon the death of his mother, his protectiveness of the horse grows as he shifts his affections from his mother to his horse denying himself grief. He uses the horse to save Cash while he saves Addie (89)

o   After selling the horse he becomes protective of Addie in her coffin again, rescuing her from the fire (126, Vickery 244)

·      Dewey Dell Bundren is a pregnant young woman ignoring that her mother has passed, preoccupied by yearning for an abortion, rejecting the idea of becoming the matriarch. Denial, Isolation Anger

·      Vardaman Bundren is a deeply philosophical child who takes turns the passing of his mother into a fantastically existential thought. Denial, Bargaining

o   Vardamans response is much more complex than the other characters because he is a child without the life experience and education to make sense of what has happened. Thus he creates these fantasies in order to avoid the truth.

§  “My mother is a fish” (49)

§  “An is different from my is” (33)

·      Cash Bundren is the eldest son, an experienced introverted carpenter, easily commanded in the beginning, emerges as a replacement patriarch and grounding force to his siblings. Depression, Power Play, Acceptance

o   Cash is the only character who truly grows through the novel and comes to accept that his mother has passed and use that event to his personal growth

§  “This increase in sensitivity and perception makes cash the only character in the novel who achieves his full humanity in which reason and intuition words and action merge into a single though complex response.”(242)