Tag Archives: Addie

Addie and New Hope

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I’d like to preface this by noting my page numbers are different in my version of the text but not far off from other versions- my apologies
I hadn’t thought much of the significance “New Hope” held until the class was brought to look at it as a motif in the story. I had only known “New Hope” as the town Addie was stone-cold set on not being buried at with Anse’s family but instead in Jefferson with her blood relatives. This fact alone brings so much meaning to New Hope as an idea. Looking at it figuratively, Addie didn’t want any new hope in her afterlife- or didn’t think there would be any there for her. I think she had spent whatever hopes she had while alive- if there were any, to begin with. She had settled on the fact that her life was as it was, her husband was who it was, her kids were as they were just like her father predicted she’d settle, “my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time” (Faulkner 158). Her last request proved to be her last metaphoric middle-finger to it all, maybe more so to Anse for “violating her aloneness” and (as I read it) making her feel love, “My aloneness had been violated and then made whole again by the violation: time, Anse, love, what you will, outside the circle” (Faulkner 158). Addie even admitted to having this be her revenge on Anse for this life she had as a mother and wife.
Darl comments on how Addie is the rim of a spoke, the roads all connecting to her (73) as they pass the sign for New Hope’s church which holds “a tranquil assertion” (73) like Addie. Everyone is made aware of how easily they could simply stop at New Hope to bury her if they dared- that’s why the reactions are so minimal. Each family member seemed to try ignoring this blatant option, other than Cash who mentions how Addie will start to smell sooner or later. If he dared, I’m sure he would have added, “We should just bury her here” save for the love he held for Addie. All of the mishaps that happen on the journey past New Hope to Jefferson would have been avoided if they had resolved to ignore her wish but as a running theme in the story, the consequences in the afterlife far outweighed the practicality of ending the trip through New Hope. Of course, beyond New Hope held more than just practicalities for the Bundrens. This is how Addie is the rim, the connecting point for the side-quests the Bundrens went on.
Having the Bundrens pass the New Hope sign twice served as a bit of a Sisyphean moment. Just as they left, so they return- with the same selfish thoughts and driving forces as when Addie had been alive. Addie being called the rim of a spoke also lends itself to that idea of a Sisyphean cycle. Sisyphus had also cheated death twice, which is why he is sentenced to repeatedly roll the rock up the mountain. Now, as Addie had lived her life settling so are her children, especially Dewey Dell who mirrors Addie’s initial repulsion to children (or just not wanting any). The entire journey centering around Addie’s last act of revenge, having all roads of her family’s life tied to hers, makes me think of “New Hope” as “Addie”. They serve as the same revolving factor for the entire story. Without “New Hope” or “Addie” the story simply would not be the same. Just as the rim of the spoke holds each bar, Addie and New Hope holds each family line to the storyline.

No Need to Speak

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From the very start of As I Lay Dying, Darl is established not just as a primary narrator in the novel, but also as the most eccentric character. Often, narrations given by other characters are sandwiched between his own in a constant affirmation of his primacy. At the same time, though, his peculiar perspective only sets him farther apart from, rather than above, the rest of his family; indeed, it alienates him from them, as sometimes his singularity elicits an almost prophetic nature. I argue, however, that this capacity for clairvoyance runs through the Bundren family with more fluidity than readers, or the characters themselves, may naturally perceive. Granted, Darl often appears to be the common force bestowing this special ability upon the others; still, in different degrees they all reflect a common sensitivity.

Products of their parents, the Bundren children (excepting Jewel, on account of his only partial biological relation) all reflect the strange influence of Anse and Addie’s complicated union. In other words, the way the Bundren children relate to their world is inherently based on how they relate to their parents’ idiosyncrasies: their collective criticalness of Anse’s moral deficiencies, and simultaneously, their inheritance of his tendency towards metaphor; from Addie, they assume a drastic stoicism and a confused relationship with words, names and labels. Indeed, even Addie’s sole narration in the novel reveals, for example, a likely source of the similarly existential crisis Dewel Dell experiences in her own nightmare-state: “I couldn’t think what I was I couldn’t think of my name I couldn’t even think I am a girl I couldn’t even think I” (121). Similarly, Addie’s assessment of words combined with Anse’s metaphorical reasonings regarding the physical formations of all God’s creatures seems to similarly influence Vardaman’s conception of his mother as a fish, his brother Jewel, a horse.

Moreover on the discourse of words, Darl and Dewey Dell exhibit a relationship in which words are often unnecessary, if not outright irrelevant. They communicate, the both of them, and comprehend each other, “without words” (27). In fact, as Dewey Dell notes, the certainty of their mutual understanding would actually be compromised if the expressions were vocalized: “[I]f he had said he knew with the words I would not have believed that he had been there and saw us” (27). The notion that non-verbal expressions can manifest such power is further emphasized by Dewey Dell when she describes the immense capacity embodied in Darl’s eyes: “The land runs out of Darl’s eyes; they swim to pin points. They begin at my feet and rise along my body to my face, and then my dress is gone” (121). In this instance, Darl doesn’t just successfully express a simple sentiment to Dewey Dell; he penetrates her psyche, disarming her with one sweeping, yet incisive look.

Darl and his older brother Cash, too, reveal an ability to understand one another outside the realm of verbal communication. Before the catastrophe at the river, for example, Darl describes this nature: “[Cash] and I look at one another with long probing looks, looks that plunge unimpeded through one another’s eyes . . . When we speak our voices are quiet, detached” (142). Clearly, the brothers engage more naturally through facial expressions than verbal ones. Indeed, twice more in the same narration, Darl and Cash communicate without words. First, Darl describes a memory of Addie holding Jewel on a pillow longer than his infant body, but he doesn’t speak his remembering. So when Cash so casually responds as if, with ease, he could hear Darl’s thoughts aloud, readers may almost miss the unspoken transmission that has taken place between the brothers. And again, as they reach the place where they will attempt the river-crossing, Cash must merely look at Darl in order to ask if he join in the undertaking.

Eyes Like Candles, Drowning

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Within the very first pages of As I Lay Dying Cora provides readers with some initial foreshadowing of the novel’s exploration of liminality, which can be defined here as existing before or throughout a threshold or transitional stage. As she reflects on Addie’s laying, dying, liminal state Cora notes that despite her deteriorating physicality Addie’s capacity to communicate prevails: “If we were deaf we could almost watch her face and hear him, see him” (8). Thus, in keeping with the old proverb, “The eyes are the windows to the soul,” Cora’s observation reflects the profound duality between the death of a body and the death of a mind; Addie’s nearly lifeless body in contrast with her still expressive face combine to form a unique threshold being. And indeed, when Addie does choose to communicate verbally, even from her deathbed, her voice is described as “strong, and unimpaired” (48).

Eyes are consistently the most symbolic organ throughout the novel. Faulkner uses the word seventy-six times over the course of his two-hundred and sixty page novel, on average once every three pages. Faulkner is not only interested in the eyes of his characters’, but also those of his horses, fish, owls, and sun; pale ones like Jewel’s, and those black as Dewey Dell’s. As Cora narrows in on Addie’s “windows to the soul” she notes, “Her eyes are like two candles when you watch them gutter down into the sockets of iron candle-sticks” (8). By relating the drowning phenomenon of a candle on the verge of burning out to Addie’s own fast-approaching extinguishment, Cora once again highlights the unique state of liminality; the fitful flickering, likened to the body’s final instinctual yearnings to stay alive, becomes less and less potent with each flare; Addie’s last breaths, a candle’s. And at the actual moment Addie crosses the threshold between life and death, Darl makes a similar observation: “…[H]er eyes, the life in them, rushing suddenly upon them; the two flames glare up for a steady instant. Then they go out as if someone had leaned down and blown upon them” (48).

Cora and Darl’s descriptions hold additional symbolic significance in their foreshadowing of the trials Addie’s dead body will endure before finally being laid to rest–– trials reiterated by Cora when she quotes Addie’s blasphemy of worshiping Jewel in place of Christ: “‘He is my cross and he will be my salvation. He will save me from the water and from the fire’” (168). As previously mentioned, a guttering candle elicits the act of drowning; though already dead by the time her family attempts to cross the bridge, Jewel first saves Addie’s coffin from drowning in the river. And later, he saves it again from burning up in the fire Darl has set to it in the barn.

That Jewel feels compelled to continuously rescue Addie’s already dead body lends significance to the discussion of liminality in As I Lay Dying both because it reveals his dedication to fulfilling Addie’s transition from laying alive to laying dead, and also because it reflects the powerful force that can remain in a departed being. Returning to the distinction between death of the body versus death of the mind, then, we come across an interesting passage from Peabody when he first arrives at Addie’s deathbed: “…[W]hen I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind–and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement” (43-44). It is important that these words are delivered by a doctor, someone who, presumably, is more familiar with death, and has a stronger scientific background, than the average person in Yoknapatawpha Country because despite these details, Peabody still embodies a spiritual perspective on death. This is how he can suggest Addie has been dead ten days before he arrived; though a few more breaths of physical life remain in her, her will to live has passed, she has no more mind for life. Conversely, once she has both physically and spiritually passed on, Addie Bundren manages to live on in other people’s lives, strangers even: “…I imagined a lot of things coming up between us, but I be durn if I ever thought it would be a body four days dead and that a woman” (117-118).

Similarities between the Compson and the Bundren Family

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As I Lay Dying has many analogous ideas and themes to The Sound and The Fury. Many of the contrasting ideas and themes are metaphoric representations of the protagonist through different objects, time unable to move forward, and similar character roles each family member play. In As I Lay Dying there are various accounts of human- animal interconnections that relate Addie to a fish and a horse. Similar to The Sound and the Fury, Caddie is symbolized to Benjy as fire, a caddie in golf, and a slipper. Faulkner uses these projections to symbolize that Caddie and Addie are always internally present within their family despite Addie’s death and Caddie’s lack of presence.  On pages 53, 67, and 84, Vardaman’s narrative focuses on the dead fish to embody Addie’s existence. Vardaman’s paranoia arises as he becomes unable to articulate and differentiate Addie’s existence from the fish’s existence and concludes someone killed Addie while she has been dead in her bed for ten days (54). Through Vardaman’s narrative, Addie is able to remain present in society only if the fish is devoured by each family member thus each family member will embody a part of Addie’s spirit (66-67), an example of animal magnetism;  “A magnetic charm or appeal” (Merriam Webster) towards the perseverance of Addie’s existence.   Furthermore, instead of an embodiment as a fish, Jewel perceives his mother as a horse. On pages 135-136, Jewel purchases a horse with his own money saved from “cleaning up forty acres of new ground Quick laid out last spring,” he also tells Anse the horse will never eat anything that belongs to him which shows Jewel’s separation in the family as well as his affection for the horse. By comparing his mother to a horse, we come to the realization Jewel isn’t cruel or mean hearted as Cora perceives him to be (21), instead he’s misperceived.

“Without stopping it overends and rears again, pauses, then crashes slowly forward and through the curtain. This time Jewel is riding upon it, clinging to it, until it crashes down and flings him forward and clear and Mack leaps forward into a thin smell of scorching meat and slaps at the widening crimson-edged holes that bloom like flowers in his undershirt” (222).

The movement of the river rushing the casket downstream compares to a wild horse attempting to thrust Jewel off it. From the beginning of the novel it is clear Jewel treats his horse with tough love, caring for it through derogatory movements (13), but for Jewel to risk his life to safe the casket would emphasis his care for his mother is a mere reflection for his care of his horse. Thus, for Jewel to state his mother is a horse only further indicates his feelings towards his mother is more personable and more profound which leads to the question if Jewel is not able to perceive his mother as a horse would he have rescued his mother from the river?

Time unable to progress forward is made clear from each family member’s inability to cope with Addie’s death. After Addie’s death each family member develops onset of problems: existence for Darl, sexuality for Dewey Dell, and the parallels of reality for Vardaman and Jewel. This exemplifies Addie’s death only hinders each family member’s ability to progress in life.  On page 146, “It is as though the space between us were time; an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between,” implicitly draws upon the burden of Addie’s death as an entropic effect not only on her children but on time as well. The idea that separation of Addie and her children is not a spatial factor but a temporal factor implies Addie’s death disrupted the continuous rhythm of time moving forward, instead, time is now hindered and doubling backwards into the past. A disastrous foreshadowing for the Bundren family once Addie died. This is very much contrasts to Quentin’s narrative in The Sound and the Fury; his constant battle to irrevocably attempt to escape time and his past leads him to commit suicide since the progression of time and the memories from the past are inescapable.

Lastly, from Addie’s narrative it is clear Jewel is the “black sheep” of the family due to an erroneous affair Addie has with Whitfield. Addie favors Jewel and firmly believes Jewel will be her salvation saving her from water and fire (168), similarly to Mrs. Compson with Jason in The Sound and the Fury, she believes Jason will rescue her from the downfall of the family’s name as she constantly reminds him he is a Bascomb and not a Compson. Dewey Dell relates to Caddy as they both are impregnated out of wedlock and is at a threshold between womanhood, Benjy and Darl would relate to one another due to their observant personas but Darl is able to comprehend what he sees, every character but Anse would relate to Quentin due to them repressing time and their inability to cope with their past, and finally, Anse and Mr. Compson are both not present/ active father figures in the story since Mr. Compson’s most indicative role in The Sound and The Fury is to leave Quentin at a threshold between time and the meaning of life in comparison to Anse who sells Jewel’s horse

Addie Bundren (Burden)

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Knowledge, and its precipitious effect on the individual stands as the major theme in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.  We as readers beckon for it, as Faulkner slowly gives us bits and pieces of the nature of the Bundren family. Upon the knowledge of their mother’s death, motives arise, and conflicts go unresolved in the novel.  Take the journey motif in stride, and one will find that truth is the greatest burden for the character and the reader.

Dewey Dell’s enlightenment along her journey reverses the reader’s idea of what life has to offer. The sign “new hope”  ignites Dewey’s meditation on her role as a woman in the deep South. Written in italics to showcase a new and important thought, Faulkner alludes to the cyclical, and pointless nature of life that Dewey Dell believes true, “Thats what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events”(121). This dense statement takes the reader into the bowels of Dewey Dell and the paradoxical truth of existence as an origin of entropy. The feminine words “womb” and “girdle” underscore Dewey’s helpless position as a single and pregnant woman in the deep south of the early 1900s. Girdle and womb are nouns that signify foundation, or support, yet the image that follows are purely of chaos.  This paradoxical language transforms the idea of life-giving  as deathbearing. This difficult truth upends the reader’s idea of Dewey Dell’s apparently simple character. Her conflict in god, hope, and life shows that truth and knowledge are not always absolute, especially for the limited reader. We find a similar realization with the first  monologue of her mother.

Rotting along the journey, Addie speaks to the reader in language that is purely entropic, yet, according to her logic, true. Through her meditation on life and her role as the giver of it, the reader gains insight into the absurdity of her duty and her meaning of life. She flips what the reader would perceive as the norm upside down. Sin is virtue. Virtue is sin. The only time Addie convinces herself good, or proud, is through the masochistic beatings of school children, the sinful birth of her bastard son Jewel, and her logic that proves words unstable. The idea of words merely as sounds with unstable meanings alludes fits her chaotic view on the world. For instance, she describes Anse and her first two children in a philosophical tone that conveys a sense of identity and therefore, pride, “[…] I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart[…] and that sin and love and fear are just sounds […]”(173). For Addie, the meaning of words, or anything that signifies truth is intangible and always changing. Just as her own death shifts the world about her, truth shifts as uneasily as a supposed finality–death. Addie’s proud tone in her description of the world conveys her own knowledge as disruptive and damaging not just for herself, but for those around her. Further, Addie’s mixed memories and desires in the middle of the book interrupts the orderly sequence of the novel. We are taken out of the  consistent temporal order of the novel, and therefore, are a step closer to the knowledge of Addie as the most disruptive force in the book.

Just as Addie and Dewey use knowledge to legitimate their experience, we as the readers use a similar logic to conclude a truth of the novel : Addie perpetuates chaos. All the Bundrens use their mother’s dying wish as a means to an end. And yes, one can say they are they are their greatest burden. Yet, it all originates from one source, Addie Bundren.

Alternative Motives within the Bundren Family

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The final moments of Addie Bundren seem to reflect the disharmony in the family and the separation they have from the outside world. Cash, who has only spoken once says “She’s gone” (48), brings about an eerie mood; he acts almost as a death reaper as he constructs a casket for Addie outside her bedroom. Cash may foreshadow the bad luck the family will carry once Addie is dead or Cash may be taking the bad luck, Addie Bundren, away from the family.  Cora and Jewel seem to be the most emotionally distant from Addie’s illness, as Cora wants acknowledgement and possibly be rewarded for staying by Addie’s side while Jewel doesn’t seem to be emotionally impacted. On page 19, Jewel mentions, “If everybody wasn’t burning hell to get her there… with Cash all day long right under the window, hammering and sawing at that”, her father responds by “You got no affection nor gentleness for her. You never had.” All the while, on page 22, Cora commends for watching over Addie as she hopes one day her family will do the same for her. From those two comments it would seem they would be unreliable narrators as they are biased and out for self-pity. Darl’s narrations are more evoked with imagery and sound and quite reminiscent of some of Benjy’s characteristics from TSAF. Darl is most in touch with Addie’s illness as he is able to sense the oncoming death (27, 40) and is the only person who is insistent on mentioning if Addie is going to die. Darl is very conscious and aware of his surroundings like Benjy to Caddy. However, on page 40, Darl’s conversation with Dewey Dell “You want her to die so you can get to town is that it?” transitions Addie’s death as a means of escape. Also, Anse’s constant mention of teeth “God’s will be done, now I can get them teeth” (52) may present Addie Bundren as a burden and possibly bad luck on the family.

The entropy that exists in this book lies from the Bundren family’s want to escape to the outside world, a world beyond their home on the hill. On pages 32 and 42, it mentions the fixation Anse has towards leaving his home, “Eyes look like pieces of burnt-out cinder” and “Anse has not been in town in twelve years.” The references of road and town once Addie has died lead me to believe she held the family together while Anse is the person tearing the family apart. Nonetheless, Addie’s burial ground will be in Jefferson in which during the journey will clarify how Addie Bundren contributed to her family, what each family member’s true motive for “escape” is,  and the definition of “bad luck” which has been repeated on numerous occasions.