An omniscient narrator, for example, often gives the impression of authorial investment and oversight, but maintains distance from the characters. The voice can reveal the narrative point-of-view, the background of the speaker (such as education level, social standing, and so on), and the relationship of the narrator to others in the story. The voice of the narrator helps shape the way that readers encounter the story. Faulkner's life will be presented, briefly, so that parallels can be drawn between his life and the life depicted in the text. This background will enable the teacher and students to 'place' Faulkner's novel historically and sociologically Faulkner wrote about his own time and a place he knew well. Students will also explore the context of the novel, examine background information on social and economic conditions in the rural South in the first decades of the twentieth century. How does Faulkner's form for the novel-a series of competing voices and perspectives presented as a multiple-voice narrative-work for or against the novel's title? Yet she only speaks once in the novel, and she is dead, not dying, throughout most of the novel (aside from the beginning chapters). The novel's title- As I Lay Dying-invokes a first-person speaker, presumably the voice of the dead mother, Addie Bundren. William Faulkner's self-proclaimed masterpiece, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, is a fascinating exploration of the many voices found in a Southern family and community. Addie Bundren in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying 'The reason for living was to get ready to stay dead for a long time.'

Faulkner william as i lay dying