The idea of existence and purpose affect the behavior and mindsets of characters in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. The death of Addie Bundren provokes the thoughts of these different characters, leading them to question and analyze the world and people around them. Existence, in these instances, not only occur in the physical world, as with Addie’s death, but in the mind as well. The idea that people and living creatures, although being memories after death, can continue to live on in one’s mind, however others may choose to move on, forget, or suppress them. What are these different perspectives and what does each suggest about what it means to “exist”?
The Modernist Novel
ENGL 387, Professor Allred, Spring 2021
I see how these themes operate in Faulkner’s text, but I think you’re going to struggle without a more specific question. One way in might be to consider competing constructions of truthfulness at work in the text: Darl’s aesthetic use of “clairvoyance” is aligned with the novelist’s art, Addie’s is more philosophical and skeptical, Vardaman’s is metaphorical and poetic, Cash’s is based in craft, and so on. You don’t need to take this path, necessarily, but I want to see you dig around in he secondary literature and see how you can narrow the focus a bit.