ABSTRACT
Clytemnestra has "scorned" to complete or to finish her husband. Agamemnon, in short, is bitter because he has no control over his own death and burial. It seems a clear answer that Faulkner's Addie gives, because she achieves after death a completion and control denied in her lifetime - she gives the family explicit orders for the burial of her corpse. There are at least three kinds of repetition in As I Lay Dying: exact repetition; ring structure; and incremental repetition. In each case, connotation has less import than reiterative rhythm. As I Lay Dying refuses to hide oral repetitions; the text foregrounds them and underlines the estrangement of speakers from their speech. The self becomes lost in language, even in speaking. Addie wants to escape the anterior, the ready-made classifications of gender, pronoun, and name, even if through dying.
