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Oprah’s Book Club, in conjunction with Phillip Morris, Walt Disney, and Satan PRESENT…. As I lay Dying by William Faulkner. Reasons the Book Club hated it. STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. NO INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGE TO COMFORT YOUR SOUL. SOUTHERN GOTHIC. Our First Novel!.
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Oprah’s Book Club, in conjunction with Phillip Morris, Walt Disney, and SatanPRESENT…
Reasons the Book Club hated it STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NO INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGE TO COMFORT YOUR SOUL SOUTHERN GOTHIC
Our First Novel! • You will finish Darl’s and Cora’s chapter tonight. • Why so little reading? • Because you need to read carefully because it is written in…
STYLE-Stream of Consciousness • Technique that records the multifarious thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or narrative sequence. • The writer attempts by the stream of consciousness to reflect all the forces, external and internal, influencing the psychology of a character at a single moment. • used by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.
William FaulknerAmerican Writer1897-1962 • renowned Mississippi writer • Nobel Prize-winning novelist and short story writer • acclaimed throughout the world as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers
As I Lay Dying • Faulkner’s first novel published after The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying • acclaimed as one of Faulkner’s greatest novels as well as a self-proclaimed “tour de force” by Faulkner himself. • told in stream-of-conscious fashion by fifteen different speakers in some 59 chapters. • depiction of the Bundren family’s quest to Jefferson to bury their dead matriarch, Addie, among her “people,” against the threats of flood and fire
SETTING—The South • Yoknapatawpha County : Pronounced "Yok ´ nuh puh TAW ´ fuh." • A county in northern Mississippi, the setting for most of William Faulkner's novels and short stories, and patterned upon Faulkner's actual home in Lafayette County, Mississippi.
In Go Down, Moses: The Miscegenation of Time, he suggests Faulkner might have consulted a 1915 Dictionary of the Choctaw Language in which the word is broken down as follows: • ik patafo, a., unplowed.patafa, pp., split open; plowed, furrowed; tilled.yakni, n., the earth; ...soil; ground; nation; ...district....yakni patafa, pp., furrowed land; fallowed land.
GENRE-- Southern Gothic • subgenre of the Gothic writing style, unique to American Literature. • Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot.
Southern Gothic • Unlike its predecessor, it uses these tools not for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South
Set up your notebook thusly: • Characters– the one speaking and those involved in action • Images/words/italics/blanks– these will repeat or “echo” across chapters • Note a passage – page and paragraph number • Comment on the passage
Bundren Family: Pa, Anse Addie, Ma Darl, (Boy) Cash, (Boy) Jewel, (Boy) Dewey Dell, (GIRL) Vardaman, (Boy) Tull Family Cora Tull (wife ) Vernon Tull, Tull (Hubby) Eula (Daughter) Kate (Daughter)
Commonly used dialect • Ere = e’er = Ever • ( sometimes) Ere = Before
By the way, this is an adze: • What literary technique is the “Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.”?
Reading Comprehension– cracking the code of this book. • What is the last thing Darl is doing in his chapter? • Where is Darl on page 9? • Page 8: “The quilt is drawn up to her chin…” WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? • Where is Cora?
Correct! Well done young scholar! • Darl is at the top of the hill about to enter the house… • On Page 9, Darl has entered the house • “Quilt drawn up to her chin…” Cora thinking about the cakes while she is sitting in the house with Addie Bundren who is in bed dying. • Darl has come up the hill and entered the house. Therefore…
Each of these chapters is taking place at (almost) the same time but from different points of view. • Where is Cash? Jewel?
Subjectivity • Each character has his own limited view of the world (limited by location and by their own thoughts which influence how they percieve the world…) • There is no Objective narrative voice to comment on the characters or tell who is right or wrong or sympathetic • Just like _________.
Faulkner Journal #1 WRITE in stream of consciousness—just don’t use your own consciousness. Topic: The school year so far. Or your own topic.
ASSIGNMENTS • READ to page 25 (Cora) TONIGHT