William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying"SalonIn-Person

As I Lay Dying is one of William Faulkner’s most widely read novels, and it serves as a helpful introduction to his work in general. It is brief and sharply focused, and the story unfolds in a series of first-person narrations embodying a remarkable variety of perspectives. At its center is the challenging journey of a family to deliver the coffin of its matriarch (Addie, whose posthumous retrospective account of her life as a teacher is altogether unexpected) to the resting place that she had chosen. Each member of the family responds to Addie’s death differently, as do those outside the family who presume to understand her character, and the bystanders that we encounter along the way provide a vivid sense of the larger social world in which this tragicomic drama is enacted. As we explore the novel’s narrative organization, we will pay particular attention to the ways in which a common loss and the grief associated with it may reveal the extraordinarily subtle interrelationship of antipathies and alliances to be found in any family.

2 credits for school members

Dinner & refreshments included

Limited to 18 teachers