What People Are Enduring - The Allegorical Meaning of As I Lay Dying 

摘要

福克纳非常善于将圣经中所蕴含的文化运用到自己的作品当中，而圣经中的一大主题，也就是关于人类的“忍耐力”也是福克纳关注的重点。而他的著作《我弥留之际》讲的是 “本德伦”一家如何为了遵守女主人在临死前希望可以葬在自己的出生的愿望而在短短的十天内经历了种种苦难的事情。正如其它小说一样，这本小说也可以看出作者对于人类“忍耐力”的看法。此篇论文将着重于“忍耐力”这一词。在英文中“endurance”有两层含义，一层为“to last”,另一层为“to bear”。从这个切入点上，不仅仅对主人公们的经历进行归类分析，还要找出每个经历背后的圣经意义，还有他们苦熬着的原因。

虽然这个故事是在福克纳创造的小说世界中发生的，但从中不难看出作者对这个世界的看法，对于人性的丑陋的见解。小说中的每个情节无不蕴含深意，主人公们发生的事既是作者的安排又是命中注定，这就是这部小说的寓言意义，人类虽然遇到重重困难，但还是向着目标前进。

本文将由五部分组成，第一部分是对这本书还有作者的介绍；第二部分为文献综述；第三部分是关于“to bear”，也就是人们在忍受着什么；第四部分是 “to last” 也就是人们的什么在延续下去；第五部分就是结语：人类在痛苦中前行。

关键词： 我弥留之际，圣经，忍耐力，小说世界，寓言意义

Abstract
Faulkner is skillful in embodying the cultural connotations of the Bible in his works. And one of the themes of Bible “people will endure” is also the focus of William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying tells us a sad story of a family how to keep their word to a died woman and how they finish their journey after fighting with all the disasters. In this paper I would like to highlight the word “endure”, which means “to bear” and “to last”. And From this point of view I would not only classify each narrator’s experiences and sufferings but also analyze what they enduring and the biblical meaning behind those sufferings and the reason why they will endure. 
Although the story happened in the fiction world, we still can see the idea that the author hold to the world and the author’s exposure to humanity. Every plot has its deep meaning inside and every protagonist’s experience is not only designed by the author and but also decreed by fate. And the allegoric meaning of this novel is that people will meet with difficulties but we still move forward to our destination.
In this paper there would be five sections. The first part is about introduction, the brief introduction of this work and the author; the second part is literature review; the third part is about what people are bearing, which is one explanation of “endure”; the forth part is about what of people are lasting, which is the second meaning of “endure”; the fifth part is the conclusion: people endure; move forward in pain.
Key words: As I Lay Dying, Bible, endurance, fiction world, allergic meaning