애디의 지휘자 역할: 포크너의 『내 죽어가며 누워있을 때』의 구조

Addie as Conductor in Structure of Faulkner"s As I Lay Dying

&nbsp;&nbsp;As I Lay Dying tells of Addie Bundren&quot;s death and how the rest members of her family fulfill her wish to take her body back to her own family burial ground. The funeral journey involves such calamities as heat, flood, and fire. Nine days pass before the coffin is finally laid to rest in Jefferson, some forty miles away.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;As I Lay Dying, like The Sound and the Fury, is a family story which experiments in both stream of consciousness and narrative. The novel possesses the same structure as its immediate forerunner, but in a complex form. There are fifty-nine brief sections apportioned among fifteen characters. So we can see Addie through their diverse voices and their different levels of consciousness.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;The phrase "as I lay dying" raises a very interesting problem. Addie Bundren is the only person in the novel who dies, yet the past tense of the intransitive verb "to lie" suggests that she goes on speaking. Addie, as the center of the book, appears to speak to us from beyond the boundary of death. Now we can see Addie more closely through her voice in her only section. She strongly feels that words are irrelevant and that only physical experience has reality. She has good reason for her disgust at mere words not only through her experience with her husband but also through her experience with her lover.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Apart from her own self-revelation, Addie&quot;s life is also narrated by the direct monologues of her family members and neighbors. They serve to shape their simple and forthright and perceptive view of Addie. The outsiders, in particular, provide us with a collective objective vision to set against the combined subjective of the family. As a result, the reader&quot;s view of her is a composite of her own explanation with her family&quot;s and her neighbors&quot; delineation.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Dead or alive, Addie is still the emotional center of the Bundren family, holding it together. At last she realizes that only a woman knows about cleaning up the house afterward. So she fulfills her feminine role and can get ready to die after cleaning her house. She is completely feminine to the extent that she expresses herself in and through her children. Being finally responsible for the Bundrens to endure all the trials, Addie enables for each of them to live his own life in the future.