Book Selections
A New Earth
Anna Karenina
As I Lay Dying
Cry, The Beloved Country
East of Eden
The Good Earth
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Light in August
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Measure of a Man
Middlesex
A Million Little Pieces
Night
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Pillars of the Earth
The Road
The Sound and the Fury
A Summer of Faulkner
Browse Past Selections
Oprah's Book Club Features
See What's New
Message Boards
Oprah's First Webcast
Faulkner Video Lectures
Reading Groups
Tips for Hosting
Make Your Own Bookmark
Essay Contest Winners
INSIDE
AS I LAY DYING
More About the Book
Meet the Characters
Quick Tips
OPRAH'S CLASSROOM
Watch the Video Lectures
Q&A with the Professor
Reading Questions
Quiz
Print Your Bookmark
Talk About This Book
AS I LAY DYING
QUIZ
In this novel of so many voices, can you remember who said what? Is it the youngest Bundren speaking in metaphor and poetic prose, or the educated city folk? Test your ear and memory by identifying the speakers of the following passages:
1.
"For the Lord aimed for him to do and not to spend too much time thinking, because his brain it's like a piece of machinery: it wont stand a whole lot of racking."
Anse
Peabody
Vernon
2.
"If it had just been me when Cash fell off of that church and if it had just been me when pa laid sick with that load of wood fell on him, it would not be happening with every bastard in the county coming in to stare at her because if there is a God what the hell is He for."
Vardaman
Dewey Dell
Jewel
3.
"If [the Lord] a aimed for a man to be always a-moving and going somewheres else, wouldn't He a put him longways on his belly, like a snake? It stands to reason He would."
Cora
Anse
Vernon
4.
"The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightening."
Darl
Cash
Moseley
5.
"I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind…."
Peabody
Addie
Dewey Dell
6.
"The trees look like chickens when they ruffle out into the cool dust on the hot days."
Darl
Vardaman
Jewel
7.
"I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth."
Addie
Darl
Dewey Dell
8.
"I am bounding toward God and my reward."
Addie
Cora
Whitfield
9.
"That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit what they are trying to say at."
Addie
Vardaman
Dewey Dell
10.
"It's better to build a tight chicken coop than a shoddy courthouse…."
Vernon
Cash
Armstid