As I Lay Dying Brief Summary

When Addie dies, her sole wish is that she is buried in her family land close to her family members. After the death, her neighbors, and family are forced to start a journey to Addie’s mainland to bury her. As they move her body from her bed death to her home there are a lot of things that happen to the family members as well as the friends that make them realize the value of others in life. In this paper, we look at how some of the characters experience challenges in life that make them realize the value of having other people in their life.

Cash Addie’s son, injures his leg as the body is being moved. He desperately needs a doctor to attend to him so fast. The pain is unbearable that he cannot even walk. Because the family does not want to waste more time since the body might decompose, there is no way that time can be afforded to take cash to a doctor. The family refuses to have any postponement of the journey and so the only way out is to have a way that Cash can be moved with her mother’s body. This leads to some people finding other ways to move him all the way to the land where his mother is to be buried. From this, Cash gets to learn the value of having other people in his life. If it were not for the help of the other family members, Cash would not have seen her mother’s burial (Faulkner 56). However, due to the value of the people around him, he got a chance to see his mother’s burial.

Addie is also another person who realizes the value of other people in her life before and after her death. Before she dies, Addie has no interest at all in the religious comfort that her neighbor is giving her. She is even bitter with her husband and the only person that she wants to see is her son. This shows that she did not have any good relationship with her husband and some of her neighbors. However, after she dies, these same people agree to grant her the wish of being buried close to her family members. The family members struggle with her and move her body across the bridge and into the land where she wants her body buried. Even after her body decomposes, they do not give up but continue with their journey to the land that Addie wishes to be laid to rest. By this, it is a great lesson of the importance of family members and generally people around our life. Though Addie is not, there to witness this great lesson it is evident that everyone needs other people in their life.

In conclusion, there are a lot of cases that support the statement that in life people need each other in the novel however the two simple scenarios clearly show that we need each other in very many situations. 

Work cited: Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Print.