This simple promise causes ten days of misery for all those around her. The night of her death, a horrible storm is born, bringing a record flood with it. The family tries to brave the wind and rain to get Addie to Jefferson despite the flood, but get held back by the absence of the two closest bridges. Days later, they ford the river, then travel on to Jefferson, where Anse remarries the day after Addie is buried. The story is narrated by fifteen different characters, but the Bundren family is the most important. The children are: Cash, the first-born carpenter; Darl, the eccentric son sent to an asylum; Jewel, the child of Addie's affair; Dewey Dell, the pregnant unwed daughter; and Vardaman, the youngest and most confused of them all. The plot is almost incidental to the book; the real jewels of the novel are the characters.
Faulkner uses first person point of view to tell his story. This is not, in itself, a wholly remarkable thing, but fifteen different characters narrate this story. This plethora of people allows the reader to look at the same situation through different eyes and realize a huge truth. Not everyone sees the world the same. Hardly a revolutionary idea, but very difficult to swallow. Having three different characters narrate the river scene reveals how each person notices something different. One character may be worried only of himself, another may think of the drowned team of mules, while the third may be worried about keeping his tools safe. This unique multiple view helps the reader to understand other people and (hopefully) to practice a bit of empathy. Faulkner also utilizes a unique technique known as stream-of-consciousness. In this technique the reader is invited into the mind of the narrator, reading his thoughts as they occur. This results in a difficult-to-understand text, but it accurately represents the confused jumble of a mind. By watching the thought processes of the different characters, the reader can further realize how different people really are, through their different styles and tones of writing.
