In As I Lay Dying, a Southern Gothic novel by William Faulkner, we see disorder, discontent, and rebellion.
Disorder: the novel is told by 15 narrators, totaling 59 narrations, both inside and outside the family, in a non-linear sequence. It is a tour-de-force of disorder: the subjectivity of so many unreliable narrators undercuts the what is true at every turn. Faulkner operates not according to time: he jumps ahead, reverts back, foretells, and retells. He said that there is no distinction between the past, present, and future: we carry the past with us always. "There's no such thing as the past."
Discontent: Addie hates words and her family; Jewel hates his family; Darl hates Jewel: Dewey Dell hates Darl; Anse hates the road and work; Cora hates Addie; Vardaman hates what's in the coffin. All of the psycho-sexual problems related to death, family, and the haunted South are present in this novel. Everyone is a grotesque: injured emotionally, physically, or mentally.
Rebellion: Addie was a nihilist: her death is revenge against her own family, as she knows they will suffer during the journey. The novel is a rebellion of words; it is language that attacks language and the nature of truth. Faulkner rebels against time, narration, objectivity, death, and the tragic and comic conventions of the novel. As I Lay Dying is truly subversive literature.
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