(on pp. 1-50, roughly)
- From his first narrative, Darl is obsessed with vision: what he can see, as well as what others might see from other perspectives. What do you notice about Darl’s distinctive mode of vision throughout the novel? Pay particular attention to Darl’s narrative on 52 ff.: where is he during this narrative?
- What are some of the antagonisms among Anse and Addie’s children that manifest in the first part of the novel? What does Darl think of Jewel? Jewel of Cash? Dewey Dell of Darl? And so on…
- What is the topography of the area around the Bundren home? Why might it be significant that the house is on a high hill? What are some of the comments that various characters make about this setting? [Jewel on 15; Peabody on 44; Anse on roads on 35].
- We know the stated reason for the trip to Jefferson that drives the plot: Addie’s deathbed request to be buried with her relatives in town. But what other motives do family members have to hit the road? [Anse on teeth on 52]
- Cora provides the most verbose and composed “outside” perspective on the Bundrens in the first 1/3 of the novel. What is her interpretation of the family’s situation? What kind of judgments does she make of individuals in the family? Are there holes in her interpretation? How do you know?
- Why doesn’t Anse like roads (see 35 ff.)? What do roads mean to Anse? How does this riff relate to the novel’s broader themes of stasis and mobility as modes of being?
- Entropy, in physics, describes the tendency of energy to move from states of organization to disorganization. It is the principle, in short, that things wind down and fall apart. What are some instances or examples of entropy in the novel? What is the broader significance of these figures of entropy?
- On 44, Peabody claims that, by the time he arrives, Addie has been dead for ten days. What does he mean by this? Is this true? What are the implications of his comment and the surrounding comments on the relationship between life and death, body and mind?
(on pp. 50-100 or so)
- One of the central motifs in the novel concerns what we might call liminal states (>Latin, limen, “threshold”). To “lay dying” is the most obvious, of course, but what are some of the in-between states found in the novel?
- In the rather comic scene in which Dewey Dell is chased by a cow who is desperate to be milked, we learn of her feelings about her pregnancy. What struck you about this set of meditations? What does pregnancy mean to DD? How do her anxieties about pregnancy link up with the death of Addie?
- Speaking of comedy, what are some of your favorite jokes in the novel? How does the novel’s comedy work, and what dark or serious elements do you detect above/beneath/alongside the humor?
- What does it say about Cash that one of his first narratives comes in the form of a list (82-3)? What are the elements of this list? What causes the list to break down, lose its balance, list, so to speak, or become listless?
- Why is Addie a fish? Why is Jewel’s mother a horse? These questions are perhaps unanswerable on some level, at least by us readers, but what should we make of the novel’s many displacements, whereby one person/place/thing substitutes for another?
(on pp. 100-150ish)
- What are some of the ironies that bubble up as the family passes the sign, “New Hope,” twice in the narrative? What does New Hope mean, literally and figuratively, in the narrative? What are some of the different reactions to the sign among members of the family?
- How do you interpret the long flashback, via Darl, of Jewel’s purchase of the spotted horse? How does this tale reframe Jewel’s character, his fascination with the horse, and Darl’s prior claim that “Jewel’s mother is a horse”?
(on pp. 150 ff.)
- How do you read the recovery of Cash’s tools at the end of the river crossing scene?
- What is Addie’s theory of language? What does language miss? What dimensions of experience lie outside of language?
- How are Addie’s words framed by the chapters around them: Cora’s chapter and especially Whitfield’s chapter?
- What are some of the material signs of modernity that crop up as the Bundrens approach Jefferson? You might think especially of Darl’s comments or Dewey Dell’s experiences in the two drug stores…
- Trace the exchanges–borrowing, bartering, and buying–that Anse undergoes in the final 1/3 of the novel.
- How do you read Cash’s attempts to “balance” the family’s decision to send Darl to Jackson at the end of the novel?
- Why is the gramophone such a bewitching object at the novel’s end? What does it represent for the Bundrens? In what ways does this object help to bring the novel to closure?
- How do you read the end of the novel? Is this comedic resolution? Tragedy? An ironization of either or both?
