As I Lay Dying: 욕망, 관습, 분노의 여정

Abstract

This essay focuses on the conflicts of desire and convention in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying from oriental humanistic view of life in which one’s identity is defined by the relationships he or she makes with other individuals, not by one’s peculiarity. The heroine, Addie’s passion of life is blocked by her husband Anse’s selfishness and laziness. Anse represents the distorted aspects of convention. His love is different from what Addie wants from him. So she does not believe the word ‘love’. Instead, she believes in the physical actions in which she perceives their bloods are mixed and become one while Anse makes use of the convention for his own purpose. His strategy is to dry up other people’s patience and simplify everything into shame or guilty. Their distorted relationship influence their children who take part in Addie’s burial journey with each one having his or her own secret and motive. Their world is a closed one where each one has its own territory isolated from others making this journey terrible and grotesque. At the end of the journey their gains are too petty to be perceived compared with their difficulties and efforts. It proves to be the triumph of manipulative conventionality that Anse best represents. But at the background of this final scene, the ever lasting human virtues such as creative passion, patience, devotion, devotion and service remain as human potentials.