Analysis of The Odyssey and As I Lay Dying

Homer’s Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic that follows Odysseus's long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War. As Odysseus battles gods, monsters, and temptations, his wife Penelope fends off suitors who believe him dead. The tale explores loyalty, perseverance, identity, and the meaning of homecoming. At its core, the Odyssey is a heroic journey marked by resilience and divine intervention, ending in reunion and restoration. As we discussed in class, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is a modernist novel that recounts the journey of the Bundren family as they transport the body of their deceased matriarch, Addie Bundren, to her requested burial site in Jefferson, Mississippi. Told through multiple interior monologues, the novel explores themes of death, identity, and communication breakdown. Each character embarks on a personal, psychological journey, revealing fractured perspectives on family, duty, and grief.

The quote Faulkner attributes to Homer, “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog’s eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades,” evokes a deep sense of betrayal and abandonment. In The Odyssey, Agamemnon’s ghost recounts his murder at the hands of his unfaithful wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. His complaint, that she would not even grant him the dignity of closing his eyes in death, accentuates the spiritual violence of betrayal. This denial of ritual and dignity becomes a symbol of total lack of emotional care, something that’s echoed powerfully in As I Lay Dying. Just as Agamemnon’s death is marked by a lack of tenderness from someone who should have cared for him, Addie Bundren’s death is surrounded by a performative sense of duty rather than genuine connection. As we read in class, Addie’s family embarks on a chaotic and absurd journey to bury her. Still, their motivations are often selfish or misguided: Anse wants new teeth, Dewey Dell hides a pregnancy, and others seek their own ends. Like Agamemnon, Addie is denied peace by those closest to her, and the ritual of death becomes hollow.

In Faulkner’s novel, Addie Bundren parallels Agamemnon not as the betrayed, but as a figure whose emotional isolation mirrors his. Though Addie is not physically murdered by her family, she is spiritually estranged from them, especially from her husband, Anse, whose selfishness and empty words she deeply resents. Her chapter reveals a disillusionment with language and familial roles, particularly motherhood and marriage. While Agamemnon dies betrayed by his wife, Addie dies feeling betrayed by a world that reduced her to societal roles she found meaningless. In a reversal of classical expectations, Addie herself becomes the silent specter who haunts the family’s journey, denied agency in life and reduced to an object in death. Addie’s actions while alive also contributed to the spiritual estrangement between her and her family. Her affair with the minister, sinning by being unfaithful to Anse, is an example of this. 

Faulkner’s reimagining of the Odyssey as a Southern Gothic tale transforms the epic hero’s journey into a fragmented, internalized odyssey. Instead of Odysseus’s clear trajectory home, the Bundrens’ journey is riddled with absurdities, miscommunication, and existential despair. The family is not driven by noble ideals but by selfishness, confusion, and social obligation. The comparison to Homer’s epic sharpens the irony: while Odysseus is a cunning hero reclaiming his rightful place, the Bundrens are disjointed figures wandering through personal failures. The relationship purposefully drawn between these two works is meant to highlight this stark difference in how both approach the hero’s journey.