Addie Bundren

Addie Bundren

An Interpretation From Inside the Casket


Addie’s chapter shows us the undiluted innerworkings of the mother who is at the core of the Bundren family predicament. The novel, As I Lay Dying is written by William Faulkner, takes place in the American South in the 1800’s. It is an account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their mother and wife. The novel is told between each character. Addie’s voice is expressed through Cora Tull’s memories and through her own brief section in the narrative. For the majority of the novel, Addie is deceased, although she does have one monologue in which she enlightens the reader of her perspective to life and her family. Faulkner strategically reveals through Addie’s monologue, her forlorn marriage to Anse, her affair, and her feelings about birth, all awhile she is dead in her casket being lugged across the countryside.  
In Addie’s monologue she reveals her life before she wed Anse. Addie was a miserable, discontent town school teacher who took pleasure in whipping her pupils when they misbehaved. She quotes her father by saying “father always said that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.” Addie is a prisoner to this perception that was left by her father.   Being a single unhappy school teacher, Addie says “ I saw [Anse] pass the school house three or four times… So I took Anse.” She says she has no living family and Anse replies that he has land and a good name. The narrative indulges the reader that Anse and Addie’s marriage wasn’t arranged, but was not of pure true love.
Also in the monologue, Addie declares that she sees martial love as an empty concept. The little value she does find in her life is from her brief affair with Whitfield, the local minister. As a result of the affair, Addie becomes disillusioned by the fact that someone supposedly virtuous could engage in a behavior so sinful. Addie mentions “My children were of me alone of the...