The use of these “animetaphors” invigorates the language and enhances the reader’s understanding of how each character sees the loss of Addie (White, 2008, p.1). Anse is compared to a “dipped rooster,” Jewel’s mother is stated to be a horse, and Vardaman claims his mother is a fish (White, 2008, p.1). Faulkner expertly juxtaposes the main characters and animals to reveal important characteristics. Faulkner employs animal metaphors, eye symbolism, character tension, and textual voice to demonstrate a person’s ability to cope with the loss of a loved one.įaulkner utilizes animal symbolism to maximize communication between the narrator and the reader to reveal the characters’ emotional state. Faulkner utilizes As I Lay Dying to address the strain placed on family ties during a close death. Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, is the epitome of a Southern gothic writing and is a great contribution to Southern literature. This also helps to develop the gothic nature of his writings. Faulkner’s stories do not attempt to represent the beauty in southern culture, but the realistic, negative parts. He established this genre of writing through his experimental writing, such as the multiple narrators experienced in As I Lay Dying. Faulkner is well-known for creating the genre know as Southern Gothic, which exemplifies Southern culture and tradition. He embodies his hometown through the fictional setting, Yoknapatawpha, that is consistent throughout all of his stories. The setting of As I Lay Dying, as well as many of his other novels, resembles the bucolic nature of his hometown.

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 in Oxford, Mississippi. “My mother is a fish” is perhaps the most famous quote from William Faulkner’s Southern Gothic novel, As I Lay Dying (Faulkner, 1957, p.

Faulkner as dying