Customer Reviews

As I Lay Dying (Cliffs Notes)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

i love this book and always will. Faulkner does a great job of letting each character's voice be heard seperately. The ending is the most surprising part. Admitidly it IS a little hard to get into at first, but if you stick to it, you will be greatly rewarded with a great story and a good book to recommend to friends.

i love the way willian faulkner wrote this book,u get each characters own thoughts, and personal expierences of the adventure this family went through. In the begining of the book, i guess it was because theyre were so many diferent nerators, it was kind of confusing, and hard to get into. But as i progressed through the book i found myself not being able to put the book down in curiosity of what would lie before me in the folowing chapters. i dont read much but i enjoyed this book.

This was my first stab at Faulkner and I will admit in the beginning I thought I had made a terrible selection. The reading is a bit difficult, but that is one of the reasons I chose a Faulkner novel for a research paper. At first, I would find myself reading chapters 2 sometimes 3 times to grasp what was going on. However, after roughly the first 6 chapters I was able to embrace the style and roll with it. After I finished the novel, my honest to God first impression was, "This sounds like a Jerry Springer episode." Faulkner of course sitting in for Jerry as the grand orchestator with "The Bundrens" as his disfunctional guest family. Thus the title for my review precursor for Jerry. This novel was published in 1930 and even then we loved to read about disfunctional families.(someone elses of course) Overall excellent novel, Faulkner did not disappoint.

i love the way willian faulkner wrote this book,u get each characters own thoughts, and personal expierences of the adventure this family went through. In the begining of the book, i guess it was because theyre were so many diferent nerators, it was kind of confusing, and hard to get into. But as i progressed through the book i found myself not being able to put the book down in curiosity of what would lie before me in the folowing chapters. i dont read much but i enjoyed this book.

I think this book fits well with Ernest Beckers Denial of Death. We have a survival instinct and yet know that we will die which leaves us motivated by a deep seated terror angst which energizes and controls all of life's activities. We deny death and try to transcend it through our symbol systems (e.g., a symbolic self which include regional ideals, cultural value and the vital lie of a personal hero myth which serve as prescriptions to immortality and elevated self-worth. "Life" follows from this and becomes, in a sense, a frantic preperation for death by building symbolic immortalities through empty verbalisms or divided or hypocritcal selves in which lies a deep fissure between words and deeds. All of this to deny our mortality. The problem is that this rigorous effort robs one of living a present-centered life and transcending narsism because of the relativity principle: My transcendance is relative to your lack of transcendance. Furthermore, we want to discount others experiences if they bring into question our own: We elevate like-others and consign different others to hell: Its the primal scene of politics. To engage in such perpetual holy wars inherently requires repression, ignorance, and oppression which is acheived to varying levels by most of the Bundrens, save Darl and perhaps Addie. Darl's tragedy is that he is not sufficiently repressed and thus he becomes a threat to the gatekeepers of morality (his kin) as he stands as a potential whistleblower to their vital lies. This pathetic condition - man's true story - is well illustrated in As I lay dieing - it shows that salvation is an illusion. Its efforts are merely filling in the lack of- trying to supplant no-thing with something; trying to transcend one's mortality by policing experience and oppressing others: We learn that filling void with contrived meanings tends to put men at odds with their environments, other people, and oneselve. Other works that help elucidate "As I lay dieing:" R. D. Laings "politics of experience" and Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a thousand faces." Think long and hard about this one and enjoy its wonderful character development and labyrinthine plot.

I thought that the way Faulkner used Jewel as a saving grace for Addie anytime there was trouble was very interesting because she was the one who seemed to have the most to gain by ending their journey to bury Addie in Jefferson. I also thought the ending of the book was very intriguing and very good because it really kept me on the edge and left me thinking about what happened next in the lives of that tragic family.

I think that if you are into literature than you might like this book but I think that it wasnt as great as my professor said it was going to be

if your not going to take the time to read the book, then do the literary community a favor and remain ignorant of the story instead of using half assed cliffnotes written by some guy/corporation hell bent on swindling dollars out of stupid clueless people.

when books are assigned to you in class your main task is clear. read the damn book! if this is too hard for you then why are you thinking reading a set outline of vague notes would be any better?

to the people that have problems reading. just practice god damnit! it doesnt take magical skills to learn how to read, some people just take longer than others (even years) but if you keep practicing you should eventually be able to read on your own without the help of some stupid douche.

I read this book for OAC english. It is very hard to understand when Darl Narrates. Other than that it is a well written novel.
Knibb high football rules

It was diffcult 2get time period & where it took place. & I have 2 write a papr by 3-3-99 please help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!