As I Lay Dying

Addie Bundren - The wife of Anse Bundren and mother to Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. Addie is a mostly absent protagonist, and her death triggers the novel’s action. She is a former schoolteacher whose bitter, loveless life causes her to despise her husband and to invest all of her love in her favorite child, Jewel, rather than in the rest of her family or God.

 

Anse Bundren - The head of the Bundren family. Anse is a poor farmer afflicted with a hunchback, whose instincts are overwhelmingly selfish. His poor childrearing skills seem to be largely responsible for his children’s various predicaments.

 

Darl Bundren- The second Bundren child. Darl is the most sensitive and articulate of the surviving Bundrens.

 

Cash Bundren - The eldest Bundren child and a skilled carpenter. Cash is the paragon of patience and selflessness, almost to the point of absurdity. He refuses ever to complain about his broken, festering leg, allowing the injury to degenerate to the point that he may never walk again.

 

Dewey Dell Bundren - The only Bundren daughter. Dewey Dell is seventeen, and a recent sexual experience has left her pregnant. Increasingly desperate, she finds her mind occupied exclusively with her pregnancy, and views all men with varying degrees of suspicion.

 

Vardaman Bundren - The youngest of the Bundren children. Vardaman has a lively imagination, and he views his mother’s death through the same lens with which he views a fish he has recently caught and cleaned.

 

Vernon Tull - The Bundrens’ wealthier neighbor. Tull is both a critic of and an unappreciated help to the Bundrens

 

Cora Tull - Vernon Tull’s wife. Cora stays with Addie during Addie’s final hours. A deeply religious woman and pious to a fault, Cora frequently and vocally disapproves of Addie’s impiety and behavior.

 

Lafe - The father of Dewey Dell’s child. While he never appears in person in the novel, Lafe is certainly a driving force behind many of Dewey Dell’s thoughts and much of her behavior.

 

Whitfield - The local minister. Held up by Cora Tull as the pinnacle of piety, Whitfield is in fact a hypocrite.