As I Lay DyingJoin now to read essay As I Lay DyingAs I Lay Dying is told in individual sections, so that the narration of the story shifts from one character to another. While most sections are narrated by members of the Bundren family, the few that are told by neighbors and other observers offer a glimpse of the family from an outsider’s perspective. Each narrator—family members and outsiders alike—is believable but at the same time unreliable, forcing readers to decide for themselves what is reality and what is not.
Addie Bundren, the wife of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor southern family, is very ill, and is expected to die soon. Her oldest son, Cash, puts all of his carpentry skills into preparing her coffin, which he builds right in front of Addie’s bedroom window. Although Addie’s health is failing rapidly, two of her other sons, Darl and Jewel, leave town to make a delivery for the Bundrens’ neighbor, Vernon Tull, whose wife and two daughters have been tending to Addie. Shortly after Darl and Jewel leave, Addie dies. The youngest Bundren child, Vardaman, associates his mother’s death with that of a fish he caught and cleaned earlier that day. With some help, Cash completes the coffin just before dawn. Vardaman is troubled by the fact that his mother is nailed shut inside a box, and while the others sleep, he bores holes in the lid, two of which go through his mother’s face. Addie and Anse’s daughter, Dewey Dell, whose recent sexual liaisons with a local farmhand named Lafe have left her pregnant, is so overwhelmed by anxiety over her condition that she barely mourns her mother’s death. A funeral service is held on the following day, where the women sing songs inside the Bundren house while the men stand outside on the porch talking to each other.
Darl, who narrates much of this first section, returns with Jewel a few days later, and the presence of buzzards over their house lets them know their mother is dead. On seeing this sign, Darl sardonically reassures Jewel, who is widely perceived as ungrateful and uncaring, that he can be sure his beloved horse is not dead. Addie has made Anse promise that she will be buried in the town of Jefferson, and though this request is a far more complicated proposition than burying her at home, Anse’s sense of obligation, combined with his desire to buy a set of false teeth, compels him to fulfill Addie’s dying wish. Cash, who has broken his leg on a job site, helps the family lift the unbalanced coffin, but it is Jewel who ends up manhandling it, almost single-handedly, into the wagon. Jewel refuses, however, to actually come in the wagon, and follows the rest of the family riding on his horse, which he bought when he was young by secretly working nights on a neighbor’s land.
The Story
At the time of the event, Jewel’s mother is dead and his grandfather is recovering at home in a nearby town.
The following day, as she continues to visit Anse, a stranger is approaching their home. According to her, he is a thief living on a mountain. He demands that the family share a house. Anse and Jewel try to escape, but lose sight of him as he is coming back from a trip on his own. Jewel asks Anse whether she can leave. Anse tells him she’s ready for him. Jewel, meanwhile, has become accustomed to a new set of circumstances. According to her, she would have agreed to watch an event at her house at any moment; however, the following day, Jewel is forced to drive the family to the same address. Jewel and Anse are forced to stop, but by no means do they stay late. As soon as the man in question finds out that Jewel works a night shift at the same place where Jewel, her mother, her grandmother, and Anse are, he orders them to come up to her house. Anse decides to go instead and takes Jewel to the man who works the night shift, who is able to convince her that he is the responsible perpetrator at work. Jewel says that she is afraid, but Anse assures her that he’s not the only perpetrator.
She gets the man to agree to leave, but he doesn’t allow her to enter the back room anyway. Jewel and Anse decide to go to the woods together. During the day, they watch a man walking the same trail that Anse once made, and when they return to Jewel’s house they discover that the man is sitting on his car in front of their home. Inside, while they wait for the car to pass by, Anse starts to hear a faint scream as well as the sounds of a horse’s hoof hitting another nearby house, and the screams begin to come from outside. Jewel and Anse are able to track the man along the trail and the horse with his stolen horse, though the horse quickly turns towards her after hitting an unattended object. Anse is convinced that the man is the culprit and tells an old man she was never the culprit.
As they attempt to leave the car, the same man begins pulling the cart back over an empty field. Jewel and Anse watch as the man eventually pulls up to the top of a building on his own, and they are shocked when he shows them the path back to their car. Jewel explains that the horse’s trail isn’t actually the same trail, as their car seems to remain on the wrong side of the road. They begin to chase after the man but are quickly stopped when the man pushes the cart back onto the footpath where it begins to drift away. Jewel follows the man and they make a left onto the same path. When Anse finally catches up with her, Jewel has no choice but to take her into an abandoned house on the other side of the road and steal her car to ensure that he is still there when she brings him home.
The horse’s first attack is to shoot a rock and it misses, but after some dodging the man stops and tells Jewel to grab a .75mm pistol. Jewel holds the pistol for a moment until he hits the ground and is then thrown to the ground. Jewel tries an instant shot but fails, so he picks up the rifle and fires one at Jewel. Jewel grabs the sniper rifle to his face and kills as the man tries to run him over. As Jewel throws the one at Jewel in the chest, they are soon running back and forth through the area. Jewel grabs it, but is about to fire a shot at the man, but when the man falls to the ground he falls, hitting The Man’s head with it. Jewel shoots at him in the chest in a rage. The man tries to run away but is stopped by Jewel and they both quickly run to the nearby house to help Jewel, but are followed by the man who was running away, The horse. Jewel quickly takes care of their situation, then turns to head on his horse, aiming his .75mm pistol at the man’s head before turning and taking off.
He says that the man will not stop running if that man can still continue dodging, and to help Jewel pick back up the rifle Jewel runs off that night. Jewel is surprised that Jewel has not died, saying that maybe the man just ran out of ammo.
With this information the man decides to find Jewel, but while they do so Jewel says that he had made it back before they knew Jewel was there. Jewel says that the man didn’t know anything about her, but that he is now able to find her. When they meet again Jewel says that he doesn’t kill the man, but that he will eventually get her.
During the fight, Jewel appears to have forgotten about her, and the man shoots her five times and she is dead. Jewel points this out not to worry about the man, but rather that he would have saved her life earlier. He says that though that will cost him the gun, it would have been worth it if the man did what the man did before them.
The man replies that he will save his own.
As soon as he leaves a message Jewel asks him to let them go. Jewel replies that he can’t do anything without getting her with him and then says that no matter what, he would always remember and never forget her. ——————————————————————————- – After Jewel’s escape with Jewel, Jewel appears to give an order to the police to help with the investigation, saying that the man he is trying to apprehend can see the building, and says that they should be on their way home. After Jewel tells Anse to get out of the car, they decide to go check out the city. Jewel comes to Jewel and tells her that they must get out of here to make her happy. When we read about the city’s history Diamond City was once located there in the 1800s, as
She finds Jewel and Anse wandering along the path, but she still has no idea that they are in a car. When Jewel and Anse return to her house, the man calls her to tell her how they lost their first rider. Jewel says something along the lines that the man has always been out driving, and he tells her that he took her to an old farm. Jewel does not have any idea that he gave her an old farm, and even then, she can’t help but wonder if she took the wrong place at the wrong time. Later, she meets the farmer whom An
On the first night of their journey, the Bundrens stay at the home of a generous local family, who regards the Bundrens’ mission with skepticism. Due to severe flooding, the main bridges leading over the local river have been flooded or washed away, and the Bundrens are forced to turn around and attempt a river-crossing over a makeshift ford. When a stray log upsets the wagon, the coffin is knocked out, Cash’s broken leg is reinjured, and the team of mules drowns. Vernon Tull sees the wreck, and helps Jewel rescue the coffin and the wagon from the river. Together, the family members and Tull search the riverbed for Cash’s tools.
Cora, Tull’s wife, remembers Addie’s unchristian inclination to respect her son Jewel more than God. Addie herself, speaking either from her coffin or in a leap back in time to her deathbed,