A Shape to Fill a Lack: Quick Thoughts on As I Lay Dying

For those who haven’t read it before, or read it too long ago to remember, As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s self-proclaimed tour-de-force about the death of Addie Bundren and her family’s ill-fated quest to bury her in Jefferson.

“If ever was such a misfortunate man,” laments Addie’s husband Anse as the he and his five (well, technically four) children face calamity after calamity. While hauling Addie’s coffin across the county, they attract grief and gossip, injury and incarceration. After one son breaks a bone, another burns down a barn. At the end of it all, her corpse much the worse for wear, Addie gets buried with her parents in Jefferson, and her husband picks up a new wife and set of teeth.

I don’t hesitate to offer this brief summary, because it really gives away nothing. The pleasure in reading As I Lay Dying comes not from what happens but from how it is told. Each chapter is narrated by a different character with his or her own style. Some characters deliver something like a straightforward, realist narration, while others veer more to stream-of-consciousness, and some (particularly Anse’s youngest son, Vardaman, and his daughter, Dewey Dell) are almost incoherent.

The most interesting chapter was the one narrated by Addie Bundren herself. Speaking either from her coffin or from some point in the past, Addie tells the story of her adult life, from Anse’s odd and unromantic proposal to her affair with Reverend Whitfield. But what makes this chapter so interesting is Addie’s understanding of the relationship between language and reality. She sees words like love and pride and fear as “a shape to fill a lack.” While her neighbour, Cora Tull, takes offense at her failure to play her proper social role and speak the conventional morality, it’s actually Addie’s disregard for the way Cora pays lip service that makes her the more admirable character. “People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too,” Addie tells us, dismissing Cora’s empty prayers. Addie’s seven-page chapter, appearing a little more than half-way through the novel, is it’s own self-contained story, deep and thrilling.

I have much more to say about the novel, so I plan to come back to it next week when I consider it alongside Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones. That being said, I'd love to hear what others think about this bold little novel—even if you hate it. Leave a comment and let us know!