Textual Connections with As I Lay Dying and Salem's Lot:
William Faulkner weaves the story of a dysfunctional family traveling to bury their newly dead mother and wife, Addie. Instead of their being one character in the novel, there are fifteen. Another book, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, was told similarly to As I Lay Dying in respect to the multiple characters telling the tale. Salem (Jerusalem’s) Lot is as different from As I Lay Dying as kindergarteners are from Shakespeare. Stephen King’s book is a thriller about a small town plagued with night creatures. Each member of the town tells at least one chapter, King uses this myriad of characters to form the most interesting web of human interactions. It is absolutely fascinating. Faulkner does not do this. He tells a story in choppy, unclear narratives of many different people. However, I initially made a text to text connection between these two books. They both make use of an unconventional method of portraying a story; many story-tellers.
William Faulkner weaves the story of a dysfunctional family traveling to bury their newly dead mother and wife, Addie. Instead of their being one character in the novel, there are fifteen. Another book, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, was told similarly to As I Lay Dying in respect to the multiple characters telling the tale. Salem (Jerusalem’s) Lot is as different from As I Lay Dying as kindergarteners are from Shakespeare. Stephen King’s book is a thriller about a small town plagued with night creatures. Each member of the town tells at least one chapter, King uses this myriad of characters to form the most interesting web of human interactions. It is absolutely fascinating. Faulkner does not do this. He tells a story in choppy, unclear narratives of many different people. However, I initially made a text to text connection between these two books. They both make use of an unconventional method of portraying a story; many story-tellers.
It was very creative to compare these two books based on how they are told. I wish that Faulkner was as successful as Stephen King in his style. It sounds like As I Lay Dying would have been much more enjoyable if it wasn't written so unclear and choppy like you said. I do like how the book is told in different point of views because it gives the reader different points of view as well but I wish that it was not so confusing and that it didn't jump all over the place. This text-to-text connection was very interesting and I might be interested in reading Stephen King's book.
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