Struggles In The Human Predicament

As I Lay Dying was written by William Faulkner when the South America experienced great changes in political and economic. Just as most of his works, this novel, consisting of fifty-nine sections of interior monologue, by fifteen narrators,reveals the desperation of people and their loss of faith in life. As a representative of the southerners, Faulkner felt obliged to find a solution to the misery in people’s life.Existentialism came into being under the similar conditions and it focuses on the absurd and isolated life people live. The major notions of Existentialism can be applied perfectly to As I Lay Dying. Moreover they provides readers with a deeper interpreting of the power of life and death in this novel.The purpose of this thesis is to analyze every Bundren family member’s struggles in these miserable southern conditions with the help of the idea of Existentialism. This paper will adopt the Existentialist ideas of Camus to analyze the existence of the characters in As I Lay Dying and reveal the living philosophy in the journey to death in this novel. There are four chapters in this paper. Chapter one will reveal the absurdity in the novel from two aspects: the title and the whole heroic journey through the idea of absurdity. Chapter two will focus on those who fails to realize the absurdity of the death and the world in the Bundren family, including the youngest son Vardaman and the only daughter Dewey Dell. Chapter three will analysis those who have realized the absurdity of the death but with negative resisting, including the father Anse, the oldest son Cash and the third son Jewel. The four chapter will reveal those who aware of the absurdity of the death and also take positive resisting, including the mother Addie and the second son Darl.