On The Collapse Of Morality In As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying has been long recognized in America as one of William Faulkner's most powerful and remarkable works. This novel reveals the psychological relationships among the poor white Bundrens in their pilgrimage-like journey, and presents human life as well as human existence as absurdity. Critics focus their attention on its humanistic idea that man will endure and prevail in future. But then, this simple short story is the miniature of a more complicated modern society and it involves some universal themes of perpetual significance. Multifarious motivations and reactions are involved in this so-called heroic journey in which the Bundrens manage to bury Addie's body. Compared with Faulkner's other novels, As I Lay Dying represents a more gloomy reality reflecting author's more pessimistic attitude, and there appear plenty of naturalistic elements. This thesis attempts to approach As I Lay Dying from the perspective of naturalism through which Faulkner discloses the collapse of traditional belief and morality in the old southern family.Introduction will give a brief survey of the criticisms of As I Lay Dying, most of which put emphases on humanitarianism or human endurance, and then point out that the story is based upon a mixture of secret motives and a violation of all values other than an encounter with physical hardship or some stoic endurance.Chapter One discusses the loss of morality standard by analyzing the novel's formal techniques. Chapter Two offers a detailed analysis on this novel's deterministic tendency. This discussion mainly focuses on the two features of naturalistic determinism. First, the Bundrens and their fate are determined by the external environment: their economic conditions, the southern background and their family environment. Second, these poor...