<p>As I Lay Dying&nbsp;is a novel by American author William Faulkner. Faulkner said that he wrote the novel in six weeks and that he did not change a word of it. Faulkner wrote it while working at a power plant, published it in 1930, and described it as a "tour de force." Faulkner's seventh novel,&nbsp;it is consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th century literature.&nbsp;The title derives from Book XI of Homer's The Odyssey, wherein Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades."</p><p>The novel utilizes stream of consciousness writing technique, multiple narrators, and varying chapter lengths.</p><p>[Literary techniques]</p><p>Throughout the novel, Faulkner presents fifteen different points of view, each chapter narrated by one character, including Addie, who, after dying, expresses her thoughts from the coffin. In 59 chapters titled only by their narrators' names, the characters are developed gradually through each other's perceptions and opinions, with Darl's predominating.</p><p>Like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, Faulkner stands among the pioneers of stream of consciousness. He first used the technique in The Sound and the Fury, and it gives As I Lay Dying its distinctly intimate tone, through the monologues of the tragically flawed Bundrens and the passers-by whom they encounter. Faulkner plays with the narrative technique by manipulating conventional differences between stream of consciousness and interior monologue. For example, Faulkner has a character such as Darl speak in his interior monologue with far more intellectual diction than he realistically possesses. This is directly playing with conventions of interior monologues because, as Dorrit Cohn states in Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, the language in the interior monologue is "like the language a character speaks to others ... it accords with his time, his place, his social station, level of intelligence ..." The novel helped found the Southern Renaissance and directs a great deal of effort as it progresses to reflections on being and existence, the existential metaphysics of everyday life.</p><p>[Film adaptation]</p><p>In 2012, filming began on a film adaptation of the novel, which has been adapted for the screen and directed by James Franco. Franco also stars as Darl Bundren.</p><p>[Theatre adaptation]</p><p>An adaptation of the novel was presented by Theatre Smith-Gilmour from March 8th -31st 2013 at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.</p>