Author: William Faulkner
background
- Tragicomic and grotesque stream of consciousness style
- Different from The Sound and the Fury
plot
- Poor white farmers, not rich planters
- Fast chronological plot
- 9 day, 40 mile The Odyssey with a rotting corpse
structure
- Story through 59 vignettes distributed among 15 character-narrators
- Stream-of-consciousness monologues
- Chronological sequence
- Perspective baton
- Silent thoughts
- Audible dialogue in external world
- Chronological sequence
- Addie
- Speaks from beyond the grave
- Parallels with Caddy from The Sound and the Fury
- Wants revenge on family by asking them to bury her far away
- Feels abused
themes
- Natural disasters
- Psychological crises
questions
notes
quotes
That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. (99)
I knew that … we had had to use one another by words like spiders dangling by their mouths from a beam, swinging and twisting and never touching, and that only through the blows of the switch could my blood and their blood flow as one stream. (99)
He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. (99)