Author Archives: Emily Cortez

Cash’s List in As I Lay Dying

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The first chapter that we get from Cash’s perspective is on pages 82 and 83 and it is in the form of a list. What we can gather from this initial chapter is that Cash appears to be more technical and analytical rather than emotional. However, we see on the second page of his chapter that that isn’t really the case.

In this chapter, we get Cash’s thoughts and process while building his mother. Addie’s, coffin for when she dies. One would think that her own son would not be viewing this as…objectively, as Cash seems to be. The first line of the chapter is simply, “I made [the coffin] on the bevel” (82). A straightforward fact, nothing emotional there, even though, as I said, one would think there would be at least some emotion behind the words.

            For the first five “items” on the list, Cash merely just states some more facts that he had to think about when making his mother’s coffin. He talks about the amount of space for the nails and seams, how the water will enter the coffin (and which way water moves the easiest), and about the stress on the seams and joints. While points four and five on the list are a little less…put together, shall we say, they still read as very analytical and not yet as Cash breaking down. With regard to points four and five, these two points showed, at least to me, just the slightest hint of emotion or of proof that Cash is not 100% okay and unaffected as he may want everybody else to believe.

            However, where Cash’s list really starts to lose control is point six on his list, which just simply has the word “except.” Point eight on Cash’s list says, “animal magnetism,” and the ninth says that “animal magnetism of a dead body makes the stress come slanting, so the seams and joints of a coffin are made on the bevel.” As I didn’t know what animal magnetism was, I looked it up and it is apparently a “natural force” that all living things, including humans and animals, and vegetables have. This supposed force could have physical effects such as healing. So from this, I gathered that what really made Cash’s list derail is when he started to directly think about Addie’s dead body. Before point seven (“A body is not square like a crosstie” (83)), Cash seems fine because he is actively stopping himself from thinking about his mother’s dead body and putting said body in the coffin that he is making. Once Cash actually starts to think about that, his mind jumbles up and causes his list to go haywire and show that he does actually have emotions about his mother dying, but that he is simply just hiding them behind a façade of being analytical and technical. Cash basically turning off his emotions and his avoidance of thinking about his mother’s dead body, and said body being in the coffin, is his coping mechanism for what is happening and what will happen. Cash creating lists and being more tactical is his way of protecting himself from the onslaught of emotions that he might get otherwise.

Also, as a side note, I did not know what a bevel or a crosstie were, so I looked them up and thought I’d include the definitions here just for anyone else that may not have known:

Bevel: an instrument consisting of two arms jointed together and opening to any angle for adjusting surfaces to be cut at an angle Crosstie: a wooden or concrete beam laid transversely under the rails of a railroad track to support it

Jason and Caddy As Middle Children

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In Jason’s section of The Sound and the Fury it is blatantly obviously how he feels about women, both the ones in his life and in general. The beginning of his chapter, which starts with “once a bitch always a bitch, what I say,” (180) gives us the immediate sense of what Jason’s chapter will be like. We also see throughout the chapter that he is very entitled, racist, and greedy. Right from the start, we get a sense of the man that Jason has turned out to be, which is the idea that interested me the most while reading this chapter. In particular, how exactly did Jason come to be the type of man he is? What led him to act and think the way he does?

After doing just a little bit of research, I found out that Jason is one of the middle children, along with his sister Caddy. When I saw this, everything sort of just clicked for me. Caddy and Jason are the ones that, throughout the story, we and the characters of the story view as the ones that sort of act out. This completely coincides with the fact that they are both the middle children of the family; the middle children, who are often seen as the “overlooked” ones tend to be the children that act out and are more rebellious.

For instance, with Caddy, she is the child that “acted out” the most by completely disregarding her perceived reputation, both from her family and from the rest of the town. She wanted to explore her sexuality, and therefore, was the “rebellious” one of the family. As a result of her getting pregnant out of wedlock, she is kicked out of the family and becomes the sort of black sheep of the family.

With Jason, we can kind of see his “middle child” attitude come out on page 181 where he tells his mother “I never had time to go to Harvard or drink myself into the ground. I had to work.” To me, this sounds very much like a sort of petulant child that is angry at anything and everything that his siblings did or were able to do. Jason’s entitlement and greediness are also very apparent by the way he steals the money from Caddy that should be going to Quentin. To me, it seems like he feels that since he is the one that works for the family, that that money is automatically his even though he did not do a single thing to actually earn that money. Jason’s seemingly endless anger at the world, his family, and just his life in general also point towards him “acting out” because of being one of the middle children of the family. The middle child/children are often overlooked in a family and respond to that with anger or aggressiveness. With Jason, he never overcame this and brought this into his adult life, as one can see by how he treats Quentin and Dilsey in his chapter, for example on page 185 when Dilsey grabs hold of him: “Then the belt came out and I jerked loose and flung her away. She stumbled into the table.”

Late to the Game Because I Was Too Worried About the Election

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So, I was just way too worried/anxious/nervous about the election to have come up with a question before, but now that blue has won (yay!!!!), I am now able to formulate thoughts again. Here’s a combined post for my research question and simple bibliography.

Research Question

So, for my research topic, I wanted to go down the path of Faulkner and the idea of feminism. I know that I possibly want to include both The Sound and The Fury (regarding Caddy) and As I Lay Dying (regarding Addie) in my research paper. For my secondary sources, I’ll most likely be looking at JSTOR and the Faulkner Journal. A working question that I have is: How do Faulkner’s works provide insight to how he viewed the subject of women and their rights? As I said, this is a working question, so I might end up changing it up a bit (if there are any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment).

Simple Bibliography

For my research process, I automatically opened up the Faulkner Journal and typed in the word “feminism.” I figured that this would give a pretty good list of pieces from the journal that would deal with the topic I was interested in. I also decided to take a look at the Mississippi Quarterly to try and find some other sources to work with, as I thought that there may be a source or two there that I could work with. I only briefly skimmed each source before putting it on my list of working sources, so I may end up changing them out at a later date.

(Possible) Sources

Gwin, Minrose C. “Feminism and Faulkner: Second Thoughts Or, what’s a Radical Feminist Doing with a Canonical Male Text Anyway?” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, 1988, pp. 55. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/docview/1311475609?accountid=27495.

Henninger, Katherine. “”it’s a Outrage”: Pregnancy and Abortion in Faulkner’s Fiction of the Thirties.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 1996, pp. 23. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/docview/1311476658?accountid=27495.

Jones, Anne Goodwyn. “The Feminine and Faulkner: Reading (Beyond) Sexual Difference.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3, 1994, p. 521+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A15939715/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=b9cc2094.

Ma, Te. “‘WHO WAS THE WOMAN?’; FEMININE SPACE AND THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY IN THE SOUND AND THE FURY.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 2, 2014, p. 39+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A517879034/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=4cc55155.

Mortimer, Gail L. “The “Masculinity” of Faulkner’s Thought.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, 1988, pp. 67. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/docview/1311475635?accountid=27495.

The Relationship Between Benjy and Caddy

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Throughout the April 7th chapter of The Sound and the Fury, there are many moments where we can see the relationship between Benjy and his older sister, Caddy. The close bond that these two characters have is made even more pronounced when one compares the way Benjy acts around Caddy to the way he acts around almost everyone else, save for Dilsey. Caddy and Dilsey are the only people throughout the first chapter of the book that can ever really get Benjy to quiet down. Everyone else tries to, but most times they are unsuccessful and have to end up getting either Caddy or Dilsey.

An example of how Benjy calms down around Caddy can be seen in the scene when Caddy and Quentin are splashing about in the water and Caddy ends up saying that she’ll “run away and never come back” (19). When she says this, Benjy starts to Cry and immediately settles down when Caddy turns to him and tells him to hush. In fact, even the wording used to say Benjy stopped crying is telling of the fact that Benjy listens more to Caddy than anyone else: “Caddy turned around and said ‘Hush’  So I hushed” (19). To me, the wording of this sentence is basically Benjy saying because Caddy told him to hush, he did. He didn’t even hesitate to do as she said, but immediately listened to his older sister.

Another moment where we see Benjy quieting down because of Caddy is a few pages later where they’re eating, and Benjy hears his mother crying and then begins crying himself. In this example, however, Benjy actually doesn’t immediately stop crying when Caddy tells him to. It’s only when Dilsey closes the door and he can no longer hear his mother crying that he stops crying when Caddy tells him to. However, it must also be noted that when Caddy tells him hush for the second time after they can no longer hear their mother crying, his response in quieting down and continuing to eat is immediate. “’Hush, now.’ Caddy said. I hushed and ate” (25). Again, there is no hesitation on Benjy’s part to quiet down when Caddy tells him to, and the only reason he didn’t comply the first time was because he could hear their mother crying. Being just a baby or child during this section, hearing his mother (presumably someone that he felt love and attachment to, even if she wasn’t necessarily all warm and fuzzy with him) crying upset him and probably made him anxious, or possibly scared or worried for their mother.