Let’s just face it: As I Lay Dying is a difficult book. Simply understanding the plot will be a challenge for you students at times, because in addition to fragmenting the story among 59 chapters narrated by 15 different characters, Faulkner uses dense, oblique, and often impressionistic prose.  And that's not all. 

The story offers a bleak assessment of one family’s efforts, implying that the insults of life don’t stop with death, and it deals with teenage pregnancy and abortion—difficult issues to confront in a classroom.