William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930) is in part a model for Fuentes' book. In Faulkner's adaptation of a folk tale, a southern poor white family takes the body of the mother, Addie Bundren, from their hill farm down to Jefferson so she can be buried with her family. No member of this family rises to the status of Artemio Cruz, who was himself desperately poor as a child. Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych (1885) describes the ordeal of a man dying of cancer. Unlike Artemio Cruz, Ivan Ilych, who Tolstoy insists is a very ordinary man, receives spiritual insight and accepts his death calmly after his intense suffering.