Two small wooden chairs side by side and one separate empty chair on a gray-blue floor against a mustard wall.

Original artwork, not a still

As I Lay Dying  ·  1930

William Faulkner

It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker turns birth and death into stark arithmetic: two people are needed to make someone, while one can die. From that imbalance comes an enormous conclusion about the world's ending. The blunt phrasing makes the reasoning sound both simple and bleak.

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