In the solitary chapter Addie has to personify her character in As I Lay Dying, she explains her lack of attachment to language as being rooted in the idea that words never reflect the complexity of the experience they attempt to communicate. Describing them as “just a shape to fill a lack” and “when the right time came you wouldn’t need need a word” (Faulkner 172), Addie reflects on various stages of her life during which words were used or forgotten in her presence, or by her, emphasizing how the unreliability and inaccuracy of words can only cause unnecessary pain and miscommunication. As a result, acceptance of a wordless state affords Addie greater emotional freedom. 

Operating on a principle embedded within her psyche from a very early age by her father, a principle which states that the point of living was to prepare to stay dead (Faulkner 169), Addie develops a rather impersonal attitude and straightforward approach to handling various aspects of life, life bearing children and interacting with others. The way in which she narrates her chapter matter-of-factly glosses over various life milestones with abrupt statements lacking description, like the repetitive mention of: “So I took Anse”  (Faulkner 170-171) to point to Addie’s emotional detachment from life, as manifested in her dismissal of words. Originating at the stage at which Addie had her first child, Cash, Addie’s dysfunctional conclusion that “living was terrible” marked her abandonment of language: “that was when I learned that words are no good; that words don’t ever fit even what they are trying to say” (Faulkner 171). Proceeding to elaborate on several instances in which this claim proves apparent, Addie mentions how the scholars who defined concepts like motherhood, pride, and fear, must never have felt or understood the scope of such things, in order to ascribe a brief word to define an experienced so nuanced with polarizing and indecipherable feelings. Describing her acceptance of a world crippled by an attachment to language, Addie explains how her husband’s use of the word “love”, although unnecessary, remains his choice. By then, Addie has already become accustomed to society’s use of words, and appears freer for it: “Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, let Anse use it, if he wants to” (Faulkner 172). In the end, even Cora’s reprimands and judgement holds no influence over her, as Addie simply concludes that those same words which breed sin, also grant salvation. Juxtaposing a word’s ability to be both powerful and ineffectual, as based on perception, Addie logically emphasizes the unnecessary nature of language, attributing to words a sphere of influence that could be avoided with a freeing abandonment of language, such as her own.

Although Addie’s rejection of language remains rooted in dysfunction, not unlike Dewey’s own, it’s difficult to blame her for desiring a less complicated relationship with life. Her theory of language, resting on the fundamental claim that words are only a “shape to fill a lack”, logically exposes all the weaknesses of language, namely that of inaccuracy in conveying meaning, and leading to miscommunication among people who, as she states, spill the same blood when struck. Although this relationship to language, paired with her troubled upbringing ends up distancing Addie from her husband, children, and neighbors, rendering her unable to ground herself in life by finding beauty and meaning in simple things, had she been more positive and open-minded, this theory could have, in practice, led to a happier life.

With the obvious image of “laying dying” as a notably overarching representation of the  liminal state in the novel, there are a few subtler in-between states that contextualize the build up to and effect of Addie’s eventual death. Some of these in-between states reveal themselves in the form of each character’s individual goals, and the gradual ways in which they strive to attain them, whereas other representations of this state manifest in physical states, whether this be literal body decay or natural developments in the body. 

Continually putting emphasis on the hardworking aspect of rural life, where the weather beats down on the body and the hot air suffocates, the novel’s attention to grotesque details in relation to both the bodies of animals and the characters speaks to each character’s preoccupation with attaining any small comfort. With each character ultimately working towards a goal, the liminal state of Addie’s slow dying becomes mirrored by the in-between states of each character en route to fulfilling a personal goal. For Cash, it’s the purchase of new carpentry tools, for Dewey, it’s reaching a doctor to get a pregnancy, for Anse it’s the purchase of new teeth, and so on. “It’s a hard country on man; it’s hard” Anse states, shortly after the death of his wife, “But now I can get them teeth. That will be a comfort. It will” (Faulkner 111). The simultaneously comical and disconsolate nature of the irony of being excited to have an excuse for going into town, both to bury his wife and get new teeth, unmistakably paints all of these individual side-motives for taking the coffin into town as liminal in-between states of slow progression in conjunction with the overarching state of slowly dying. The second manifestation of liminal in-between states comes in the form of developing physical states, namely, but not limited to, those of Dewey and Cash. While Anse’s developing inability to toothlessly eat “God’s own victuals as a man should” (Faulkner 37) represents bodily decay on a small scale, Cash’s continual use of a broken leg offers a stronger example of being on this threshold between health and infection, or physical activity and disability. Contrasting repetitive reminders of Addie’s breathing with not only the sound of Cash’s hammering of the coffin, but also the growing awareness that Cash’s infection will soon have festered up to a point at which he can no longer walk, Faulkner highlights this physical decay as a representation of liminality. Likewise, Dewey’s physical developments, as a result of pregnancy-related growth, also marks an in-between liminal state. Her thoughts, becoming increasingly more plagued by worry, despair, and frustration, reflect the slow physical development of her pregnant body, highlighting an in-between state of emotional and physical life or death that mirrors Addie’s own dying.

Employing this central motif of the liminal state in his novel As I Lay Dying, Faulkner makes use of smaller, in-between representations of liminality, as manifested in personal goals and physical states, to emphasize the build up to and impact of Addies’ death. These smaller liminal states, in conjunction with “to lay dying”, serve to highlight how complex and diverse challenges of rural life can be, where the simplicity of concepts like life and death remain the only familiar and grounding aspects of living with unpredictable tasks and developments. Death may occupy the mind, but a preoccupation with dealing with its aftermath offers a small relief from more ambiguous problems at hand.

Traced back to Addie’s neglectful attitude towards having Dewey to negate the birth of an illegitimate child, Dewey’s impulsive decisions and solitary nature cause her to have an unnatural relationship with both unexpected changes in her body and her emotions. Among these changes, Dewey’s pregnancy notably keeps her mind fixated on one goal: getting to the town doctor for an abortion. In her mind, this is the only rational solution. Her preoccupation with the body dysmorphia that follows her discovery of pregnancy, owing to God’s natural signs, and her obsession with reaching this goal clearly manifest in her behavior and daily life at home, leading her to not only disregard the death of her mother, but also grow to hate and harm Darl for wordlessly finding out about her state.

Suffering from a form of dysmorphia from a very early age, as a result of Addie’s dismissive attitude, Dewey grows up as the only daughter among a household of sons, with the sole point of reference for her emotions and bodily changes being the mother she struggles to emotionally connect to. Bearing a very basic understanding of pregnancy in mind, one which reflects the natural and impersonal process of the birth of farm animals, Dewey can only attribute feelings of frustration and disgust towards her state. On the one hand, life has taught her, through the lens of her own emotionally damaged upbringing and Addie’s detachment to her children, that childbearing isn’t a pleasant or useful life experience. On the other, all Dewey has as a point of reference for emotions and bodily functions linked to women stem from her own exploration and her experience with female farm animals. In the chapter during which the family’s cow chases Dewey, moaning to be milked, Dewey, in frustration, lectures her: “What you got in you aint nothing to what I got in me, even if you are a woman too…He could fix it alright, if he just would. And he doesn’t even know it” (Faulkner 63). Seeping into her contemplative state, even as she goes about fulfilling her everyday routine, Dewey considers all the options she has, all the while insisting on independently finding a solution. Arguably, Lafe could “fix it” if he knew, in the form of ten dollars for the doctor, as we later find out, but this isolation again reflects Dewey’s insistence on taking control of the situation like she had to take control of her life growing up, without the healthy comfort of relying on someone like a mother. Amidst a tumultuous description of uncomfortable visuals in this chapter, namely that of the dead fish seeping blood quietly, the dead air paired with the death earth and dead darkness, and that of humans as tubs of guts, Dewey’s thoughts chaotically whirl and repeat. Starting the chapter with a meditation on worry, and whether or not she, or Cash have any conception of it, she closes the chapter with much the same, with little development: “I don’t know whether I’m worrying or not. Whether I can or not. I don’t know whether I can cry or not…I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth” (Faulkner 64). Remaining confused about her emotions, it’s no surprise that her obsession with maintaining control over what she can, her confusion with that which she cannot understand, and her physical dysmorphia regarding her pregnancy, lead her to making irrational impulsive decisions, as she does when she sets Darl up for arrest, and physically beats him for finding out about her pregnancy on his own. 

In the end, all that should have held some meaning to Dewey, like maintaining a healthy relationship with her brothers, or tending to her mother in her final hours of life, didn’t. Increasingly overwhelmed by the thoughts running through her head, Dewey eventually reaches a point where her disgust towards pregnancy trumps everything else, even her own instincts of self-preservation, as she goes to the doctor and lays her life at his hands, comforted at last by the idea of reaching her goal.