(The following is a condensation of the article "The Individual and the Family: Faulkner's As I Lay Dying," by James L. Roberts, which appeared in The Arizona Quarterly 16.1 (Spring 1960): 26-38, and is reprinted with permission.)
One key to a basic interpretation [of As I Lay Dying] lies in the relationship between the psychological motives for the journey to Jefferson and the attitude of the Bundrens toward Darl. The first problem is concerned not merely with the fulfillment of the promise made to dying Addie, but with both the reasons why Addie demands this promise and the reasons why her family defy fire and water to fulfill it.
Addie had always seen herself as being completely alone in the world. She sensed that her own father did not love her. Thus when he died, she had no kin left. When Anse came along, she was glad to escape from the loneliness of teaching school. She dismisses her courtship with the curt words: "So I took Anse." Faulkner mentions no love or emotional understanding, just an acceptance and maybe not even an acceptance but a conditioning for death. For Addie all living had to be some type of preparation for death. She had felt alone so much during her life that her great desire was to make other people aware of her presence. And she felt that only through violence could she achieve her aims. She also felt that words are useless, and she soon comes to realize that Anse (and later preacher Whitfield) are just words.
Thus Addie built her life around violence. But she had failed to make her presence felt by other people. She finally came to the full realization that during her life she had also been only words; after death, she was determined that it should be otherwise. Consequently, feeling that she would attain reality only when she imposed herself upon the consciousness of others, she made them promise to carry her to Jefferson, forty miles away, to bury her.
