Faulkner & Flannery Notes – Week 4
Spring 2014 Books & Film Class Topic – Faulkner & Flannery: Exploring the Southern Gothic Held Wednesdays through February 26 at UL Lafayette Instructor: Dr. Mary Ann Wilson Notes will be updated each Friday through February 28; comment to join in the discussion. On Wednesday, we delved into Faulkner's second novel As I Lay Dying. His most well known and the one that's taught in high school English, this novel has all the elements of the Southern Gothic. "You can't get more Southern Gothic than carting your mother's rotting corpse across the state for burial," says Dr. Wilson. As I Lay Dying is also one of the few books by Faulkner that has much humor in it, but not everyone in class agreed with that. Some viewed the novel as quite dark, but I can admit I chuckled a few times, especially in some scenes with Anse Bundren. It also helps to consider the time period this book is set in — the Depression-era South — and that the Bundren family is poor white trash, only a step up from the African Americans, who are mostly absent in this book. Most of them have their own motives for wanting to go to Jefferson to bury their mother,
