Book Club Guide

As I Lay Dying

by William Faulkner · 1930 · Classics

Key themes

Death and the body's indignity
A family's interior lives — and their mutual incomprehension
Language as both connection and wall

About this book

As Addie Bundren lies dying, fifteen members of her family and community narrate the subsequent chapter — their voices telling the story of carrying her body across Mississippi to bury her in Jefferson. Faulkner's formally radical novel uses stream-of-consciousness and multiple perspectives to create one of the most demanding and most studied works in the American canon.

Published in 1930, As I Lay Dying was Faulkner's fifth novel and one of the most formally radical works in American literature. Faulkner said he wanted to see how far he could 'take a wrong turn and then recover.'

Discussion questions

The novel is told through fifteen narrators with very different voices and intelligences. How does this fragmented perspective change your experience of the Bundren family's journey — does it create empathy or distance?
Addie Bundren gets one chapter — after her death. What does this chapter reveal about the nature of the grief and duty that drives the journey?
Darl is the most articulate of the narrators and is ultimately committed to an asylum. What is Faulkner saying through the relationship between insight and social function?
The journey is both intensely practical and farcical. How does Faulkner sustain the balance between tragedy and grotesque comedy — and what does this balance say about the nature of grief?
Faulkner reportedly wrote this novel in six weeks while working night shifts at a power plant. Does it feel like a work of sustained planning or of sudden vision — and how does that distinction affect your reading?