As noted in class, the introduction (with thesis statement) and informal outline are due on Monday, 1/7/13.
In addition to the various suggested topics suggested during our discussions, you might also take a look at these ideas culled from a Duke Univ. site:
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As I Lay Dying Essay
Topics
From people.duke.edu
Directions: Write a two to three-page formal essay on ONE of
the following topics.
1) Compare the narration of members of the Bundren family with
those of outside observers, like Tull, Cora, and Moseley. Which set of
narrators do you feel provides a more accurate perspective on the events of the
novel? How so and why?
2) Re-look at Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Speech. He claimed that
writers need to convey the problems of the human heart. Do you think that
Faulkner achieved writing about “love and honor and pity and pride and
compassion and sacrifice” in this novel?
Explain.
3) Critic Melvin Backman suggests that Faulkner follows a pattern
through the heroes of his novels: each protagonist struggles with a sense of
alienation. As I Lay Dying, however, “breaks from this absorption with the isolated hero. It
is instead a study of community, simple country folk (the Tulls, Armstids, and
Bundrens), that is almost comic, and certainly reflective of some faith in
humanity. The central characters are human beings, more complex than the
symbols of evil, estrangement, and post-World- War-I despair that had been
important foci in the previous novels.”
Do
you agree with Backman’s critique? Does this novel provide community and a
sense of faith in humanity?
