American Literature / Unit 15 AML 1422 short lesson, about 20 seconds
*As I Lay Dying*
Captions available
The idea
A poor family carries their mother's coffin across flooded country to bury her in town, and the novel is told in short chapters by fifteen different narrators including the dead woman. The result is comic, grotesque and formally radical at once.
In practice
A coffin, a flood, and fifteen narrators.
Where people slip
One chapter is spoken by the corpse.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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