William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying: An Essay on Subjectivity in the Short Story

One of the central thematic elements of As I Lay Dying is the distinction between what is a fact and what is an interpretation of a fact. Clearly, any objective fact can result in a multitude of subjective interpretations because the characters all have singular points of view. Their perspectives of any empirical truth is dependent upon their prejudices and perceptions; as a result nothing that is said can be fully trusted or assumed to be pure in its objective truth. Though the novel is structured on the basis of the fact that each character is on the same path and experiencing the same events, they all differ in their perspectives of what they see and the emotions that are engendered by the events. Since each of the novel's characters possess a perspective that the reader cannot know for sure is entirely accurate and truthful, the them of As I Lay Dying may be said to be that there is no such thing as objective truth.