2130_american lit module 2 _william faulkner

William Faulkner

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company

William Faulkner


• Stream of consciousness

• Multiple narrators

• Southern gothic

• Yoknapatawpha County

Faulkner’s Modernist Style


William Faulkner


• What does the reader expect, given this title?

• Who is the “I” of the title? Addie Bundren? What or who else does that first-person point of view include?

• “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades” (Agamemnon to Odysseus, The Odyssey)

As I Lay Dying


“Jewell and I come up from the field, following the path in single file . . . I pass him and mount the path, beginning to hear Cash’s saw.

When I reach the top he has quit sawing . . . A good carpenter. Addie Bundren could not want a better one, a better box to lie in. It will give her confidence and comfort.”

As I Lay Dying


• “ ‘words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at’ ”

• “a word is ‘just a shape to fill a lack’ ” • “a name is a ‘word as a shape, a vessel . . . a

significant shape profoundly without life like an empty door frame’ ”

• “words are ‘just sounds’ that people have ‘for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words’ ”

As I Lay Dying


• The Bundren Family– Anse– Addie– Cash– Darl– Jewell– Dewey Dell– Vardaman

As I Lay Dying


“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. ‘What are you laughing at?’ I said.

‘Yes yes yes yes yes.’ . . .

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

‘Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.’ ”

As I Lay Dying


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

As I Lay Dying


• What is it that motivates the main characters of these stories, Abner Snopes and Emily Grierson?

• How is Emily Grierson like Addie Bundren?

• How is Abner Snopes like Anse Bundren?

• What do these characters collectively tell us about Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County?

“A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning”


• What makes Emily Grierson such an enigma to her neighbors?

• What is she hiding from them, literally as well as figuratively?

• Is Emily crazy, or do her actions reflect on the community that raised her?

“A Rose for Emily”


• What is the source of Abner Snopes’s rage? – a glitch in his personality? – a protest against social inequities that have

destined him to a dead-end life as a sharecropper?

– an existential agony of which he is only dimly aware?

“Barn Burning”


“Barn Burning”

Visit the StudySpace at:http://wwnorton.com/studyspace

For more learning resources, please visit the StudySpace site for

The Norton Anthology of American Literature.

This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for

William Faulkner

http://wwnorton.com/studyspace

2130_american lit module 2 _william faulkner

Education