Reconstruction:As I Lay Dying

You are reading a reconstruction.

Quick guide (IMPORTANT): please read our quick reading guide.

Spoiler note: we advocate a “spoilers don’t matter” stance. Read more about it.

Copyright note: we do NOT generally own the rights to the reconstructed content. Reproduction is made under the provisions of fair use for educational purposes.

For more info on reconstructions, we refer you to our manifesto or the online book.

As I Lay Dying opens with Darl as the point-of-view character. Early on, it is established that Darl can <{{#replace:distance|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF himself from even himself.

❝ Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cotton-house can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

The end of his chapter is marked by a <{{#replace:rythmic|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF of the noise the adze makes:

❝ Addie Bundren could not want a better box to lie in. It will give her confidence and comfort. I go on to the house, followed by the Chuck Chuck Chuck of the adze.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

His brother Vardaman also shows in his chapters a <{{#replace:rythmic|}}||nested=yes}}}}> type of <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF:

❝ It is dark. I can hear wood, silence: I know them. But not living sounds, not even him. It as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components—snuffings and stampings; smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of a co-ordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an is different from my is. I see him dissolve—legs, a rolling eye, a gaudy splotching like cold flames—and float upon the dark in fading solution; all one yet neither; all either yet none. I can see hearing coil toward him, caressing, shaping his hard shape—fetlock, hip, shoulder, and head; smell and sound. I am not afraid.

“Cooked and et. Cooked and et.”

 ❞

William Faulkner

Vardaman, As I Lay Dying

His chapters show a recurring <{{#replace:familial <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF that is introduced along a <{{#replace:transformation|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF of the mother Addie Bundren:

❝ It was not her because it was laying right yonder in the dirt. And now it’s all chopped up. I chopped it up. It’s laying in the kitchen in the bleeding pan, waiting to be cooked and et. Then it wasn’t and she was, and now it is and she wasn’t. And tomorrow it will be cooked and she will be him and pa and Cash and Dewey Dell and there won’t be anything in the box and so she can breathe.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

Darl confirms his <{{#replace:distancing|}}||nested=yes}}}}> ability:

❝ In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because hi is not what he is and he is what he is not. […] And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

 ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

In a one-line Vardaman chapter, the <{{#replace:transformation|}}||nested=yes}}}}> is completed.

❝ My mother is a fish.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

While the family moves the coffin to town, Cash mentions its <{{#replace:balance|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF (which is quite ironic considering his background story includes him falling from a roof and breaking a leg):

❝ “It won’t balance. If you want it to tote and ride on a balance, we will have—”  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

Addie Bundren has a monologue in her own chapter where she points out <{{#replace:arbitrary|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF words and names:

❝ Anse. Why Anse. Why are you Anse. I would think about his name until after a while I could see the word as a shape, a vessel, and I would watch him liquefy and flow into it like cold molasses flowing out of the darkness into the vessel, until the jar stood full and motionless: a significant shape profoundly without life like an empty door frame; and then I would find that I had forgotten the name of the jar. I would think: The shape of my body where I used to be a virgin is in the shape of a and I couldn’t think Anse, couldn’t remember Anse. It was not that I could think of myself as no longer unvirgin, because I was three now. And when I would think Cash and Darl that way until their names would die and solidify into a shape and then fade away, I would say, All right. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they call them. […] hearing the dark voicelessness in which the words are the deeds, and the other words that are not deeds, that are just gaps in people’s lacks, coming down like the cries of the geese out of the wild darkness in the old terrible nights, fumbling at the deeds like orphans to whom are pointed out in a crowd two faces and told, That is your father, your mother. ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

Vardaman reiterates his <span id="familial <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>" style="font-style:italic; color: #505050"><{{#replace:familial <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}> while the family gets nearer to town. In particular, he uses the <{{#replace:phrasal <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF “X is my brother:”

❝ Darl and Jewel and Dewey Dell and I are walking up the hill behind the wagon. Jewel came back. He came up the road and got into the wagon. He was walking. Jewel hasn’t got a horse any more. Jewel is my brother. Cash is my brother. Cash has a broken leg. We fixed Cash’s leg so it doesn’t hurt. Cash is my brother. Jewel is my brother too, but he hasn’t got a broken leg.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

On their way, Vardaman spots something (presumably Darl trying to burn the coffin), and identifies him through <span id="familial <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>" style="font-style:italic; color: #505050"><{{#replace:familial <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}>:

❝ And I saw something Dewey Dell told me not to tell nobody. It is not about pa and it is not about Cash and it is not about Jewel and it not about Dewey Dell and it is not about me.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

Cash later tries to <{{#replace:balance|}}||nested=yes}}}}> what is right and what is wrong:

❝ Because Jewel is too hard on him. Of course it was Jewel’s horse was traded to get her that nigh to town, and in a sense it was the value of his horse Darl tried to burn up. But I thought more than once before we crossed the river and after, how it would be God’s blessing if He did take her outen our hands and get shut of her in some clean way, and it seemed to me that when Jewel worked so to get her outen the river, he was going against God in a way, and when Dal seen that it looked like one of us would have to do something, I can almost believe he done right in a way. But I don’t reckon nothing excuses setting fire to a man’s barn and endangering his stock and destroying his property.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

The <{{#replace:balancing|}}||nested=yes}}}}> <{{#replace:relativizes|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF Darl’s doings through his <{{#replace:distancing|}}||nested=yes}}}}>:

❝ Because there ain’t nothing justifies the deliberate destruction of what a man has built with his own sweat and stored the fruit of his sweat into.

But I ain’t so sho that ere a man has the right to say what is crazy and what ain’t. It’s like there was a fellow in every man that’s done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.

 ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

Vardaman expresses a <span id="phrasal <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>" style="font-style:italic; color: #505050"><{{#replace:phrasal <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}> involving Darl after the latter was arrested:

❝ He had to get on the train to go to Jackson. I have not been on the train, but Darl has been on the train. Darl. Darl is my brother. Darl, Darl  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

The latter quote directly transitions into a Darl chapter where Darl <{{#replace:repeats|}}||nested=yes}}}}> not only his own name, but also the <span id="phrasal <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>" style="font-style:italic; color: #505050"><{{#replace:phrasal <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}>, achieving a <{{#replace:<{{#replace:relativized|}}||nested=yes}}}}> <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}>DEF:

❝ Darl has gone to Jackson. They put him on the train, laughing, down the long car laughing, the heads turning like the heads of owls when he passed. […]

Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying light in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.

“Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes”

 ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

At the end of the last chapter, Cash expresses a <span id="<{{#replace:relativized|}}||nested=yes}}}}> <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>" style="font-style:italic; color: #505050"><{{#replace:<{{#replace:relativized|}}||nested=yes}}}}> <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}> when he says “this world is not his world; this life his life:”

❝ Then we see it wasn’t the grip that made him look different; it was his face, and Jewel says, “He got them teeth.”

It was a fact. It made him look a foot taller, kind of holding his head up, hangdog and proud too, and then we see her behind him, carrying the other grip—a kind of duck-shaped woman all dressed up, with them kind of hard-looking pop eyes like she was daring ere a man to say nothing. And then I see that the grip she was carrying was one of them little graphophones. It was for a fact, all shut up as pretty as a picture, and every time a new record would come from the mail order and us setting in the house in the winter, listening to it, I would think what a shame Darl couldn’t be to enjoy it too. But it is better so for him. This world is not his world; this life his life.

 ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying

This <span id="<{{#replace:relativized|}}||nested=yes}}}}> <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>" style="font-style:italic; color: #505050"><{{#replace:<{{#replace:relativized|}}||nested=yes}}}}> <{{#replace:repetition|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}> contrasts with the final line that follows, where a <span id="familial <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>" style="font-style:italic; color: #505050"><{{#replace:familial <{{#replace:enumeration|}}||nested=yes}}}}>|}}||nested=yes}}}}> implies an <{{#replace:arbitrary|}}||nested=yes}}}}> <{{#replace:transformation|}}||nested=yes}}}}> (from the deceased to the “duck-shaped woman”) despite “Mrs Bundren” <{{#replace:repeating|}}||nested=yes}}}}> Addie Bundren’s name:

❝ “It’s Cash and Jewel and Vardaman and Dewey Dell,” pa says, kind of hangdog and proud too, with his teeth and all, even if he wouldn’t look at us. “Meet Mrs Bundren,” he says.  ❞

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying