As I Lay Dying

Question 1

How many different narrators are there in “As I Lay Dying”?

Answer 1

15

Question 2

What is the county where this story takes place?

Answer 2

Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi

Question 3

Who are the parents of the Bundren family?

Answer 3

Addie and Anse

Question 4

Who are the sons of the Bundren family?

Answer 4

Cash, Jewel, Darl, and Vardaman

Question 5

Who is the daughter in the Bundren family?

Answer 5

Dewey Dell

Question 6

Who makes Addie’s coffin?

Answer 6

Cash

Question 7

What is Jewel’s prized possession?

Answer 7

A horse

Question 8

Who is Jewel’s father?

Answer 8

Whitfield, the minister

Question 9

What was Addie’s profession?

Answer 9

Schoolteacher

Question 10

Where does Addie want to be buried? Why?

Answer 10

Jefferson; that is where her family is from.

Question 11

Who are the Bundren’s neighbors who narrate a few chapters?

Answer 11

Vernon and Cora Tull

Question 12

Who sets fire to the Gillespie barn? Why?

Answer 12

Darl - he hopes to burn his mother’s coffin and end the farce of them trying to take her to Jefferson.

Question 13

What two things does Anse acquire at the end of the novel?

Answer 13

A new wife and a set of false teeth.

Question 14

What happens to Darl?

Answer 14

In order to avoid paying to replace the Gillespie barn, Anse has Darl declared insane and sent to an asylum in Jackson.

Question 15

What 20th century thinker influenced Faulkner’s focus on cognition?

Answer 15

Sigmund Freud (the unconscious, dreams, and sublimation, where strong feelings like grief are masked by other concerns on the mind’s surface)

Question 16

For what work did Faulkner win the 1950 Nobel Prize?

Answer 16

Intruder in the Dust

Question 17

What are some of the despicable things Anse does to get money for the new set of mules after his drown in the river?

Answer 17

• Sells Jewel’s horse
• Takes the money Cash was saving for a phonograph
• Later, he takes the money Dewey Dell needs for her abortion to buy new teeth

Question 18

Why aren’t Darl and Jewel there for their mother’s death?

Answer 18

They’ve taken a job hauling lumber that will cause them to be gone 3 days. They go even though they know it is likely Addie will be dead by the time they return.

Question 19

From whose perspective is the book title?

Answer 19

Ostensibly, Addie’s. But there is an element of decay and inevitability that I think we could actually see it as coming collectively from the Bundren family.

Question 20

What is the name of the man Dewey Dell slept with?

Answer 20

Lafe

Question 21

Why is Addie put into her coffin upside down?

Answer 21

So there will be room for her wedding dress to spread out.

Question 22

How did Cash break his leg the first time?

Answer 22

Falling off the roof of a church he was working on.

Question 23

What two movements/styles could we fit “As I Lay Dying’ into?

Answer 23

• Southern Gothic

- Modernism

Question 24

How does Jewel get his horse?

Answer 24

As a teenager, he secretly works nights to earn the money to buy it. For a while, his family thinks he has a disease.

Question 25

What is Anse’s primary characteristic?

Answer 25

He is lazy (Addie describes him as “dead”) (inertia)