Tag Archives: AILD

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

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.

thoughts on Franco’s film

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Thanks to all who showed up last night: despite the tech difficulties, it was a lot of fun.  But not too much time to chat afterwards, so here’s what I thought about last night as I was accidentally taking the M into deepest Williamsburg and walking 0.5 mi through the rain to find the G:

  • as Nick and I were saying after the screening, it was a remarkably unfunny AILD.  The novel is more funny strange than funny “ha-ha” (more komisch than lustig, for the Germanist cabal in the MA class), but it’s definitely funny.  Franco plays it very straight, putting the focus on the mourners and the loss and diverting our attention, for the most part, from the incongruities and absurdities that gin up the humor.  No “I am a wet seed in the hot wild earth”; no Anse on trees and roads; no Cora Tull at all.  When characters do voice moments that are funny in the novel, they’re often played for pure hypocrisy (e.g., Whitfield’s “bless this house”; Anse’s “meet Mrs. Bundren”; even the JV pharmacist’s taking advantage of DD) despite their being more two-sided in the novel.
  • Along similar lines, I thought Franco emphasized the “human condition” reading of the novel more than the reading of it as an examination of modernization in rural space (full disclosure: my reading, in case that’s not obvious).  So AILD is a timeless tale of the universal human drama of attachment and loss rather than a text that issues from and speaks to a particular moment in history where “modern” and “folk” are rubbing together in ways that are both tragic and comic (but mostly grotesquely comic).
  • For this reason, I thought the last 1/3 of the film sucked: Franco doesn’t really register the strangeness of the Bundrens to Mottstown and Jefferson as strongly as the novel does.  Most problematically, he doesn’t emphasize the way Cash, DD, and Vardaman are complicit in re-routing Addie’s request for their own ends, rather than just Anse.  So the film ends in melodrama (case in point: Cash’s leg has to be gratuitously amputated rather than just poorly reset) rather than irony.
  • And, oddly, given the fact that he’s the only bankable star, Franco’s performance was the weak point of the film for me.  If the scene when Darl is sent away is to work, we have to understand that Darl moves from pretty durned crazy to plumb crazy over the course of the novel. But Franco can’t help but play him as a handsome and charming, but misunderstood artist, who is wrongly betrayed by people who don’t appreciate his genius.  It’s like the Bundrens are the House Republicans and Darl is Franco, who’s NEA grant was withdrawn.  The novel, in contrast, makes clear that everyone sees Darl as unsettingly different (only Cora articulates it positively, but it’s as if he’s some kind of “holy fool” for her), with “eyes full of the land” and such.

Having said all that, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  The split-screen was a game effort to try to import the novel’s theme of clairvoyance and perspectival shifts into the cinematic medium.  Anse was inspired in many respects: the teeth deserve an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Prosthesis.  I was impressed by how much of the novel’s text was crammed into the film, often quite organically and elegantly, and how much detail was smuggled in via images (Vardaman and the fish; Tull’s shine for Vardaman) thus obviating the need to have annoying voiceover.

Very curious to hear what y’all think, in comments or in separate posts.  Who’s on board for Franco’s TSAF, starring Jon Hamm as big Jason?

The Idolatry Of False Motherhood

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Mary Rubi

Darl doesn’t have a mother. Darl doesn’t have much of a sister either. Dewey Dell is the first one to restrain Darl when he’s taken away to the funny farm. The sibling animosity deepens and transforms as the novel progresses. She turns away when he looks upon her, he sees the sin and she can feel the sensation of knowledge. Dewey Dell knows that Darl knows her secret, Darl knows that Dewey Dell hates him for knowing. She imagines murdering him, buthering him with the knife that Vardaman uses to gut a fish. (121) She, who wishes to let her mother die, wishes to stab her brother. He, who claims not to have a mother, likes to speak about the animals that have replaced his mother. Clearly Vardaman does not have a fish for a mother, nor is Jewel the son of a horse. Their idols are their mothers. Vardaman has transformed his mother into a figment of an idea, a rotting wet corpse in a box. She is fish that needs to be gutted and eaten. Jewel would rather buy and ride his pony than be near his dead mother or his family. The bastard son may have been a diamond in the eyes of his mother, but he cares more for coal than love. Faulkner uses the biblical image of idolatry to depict the severity of the Bundren family and their neighbors. They, who claim to have a personal relationship with God are portrayed as the lowliest of idolaters. Anse repeatedly comments about his piety and good character, he’s done the best he can he says and the good Lord knows it. But he’d rather have a new set of teeth than have loved his wife. He would rather believe that he’s a good Christian man than a prideful fool that won’t seek shelter from the rain. Mrs. Tull is always a signing and praising God, but she makes an idol of her husband. The only character without an idol is Darl, Darl doesn’t have a mother. Death took his real mother, and that’s where his mother can stay. Death becomes a metaphor for a persistent condition that never comes and continues after death. Death is not as it seems, because many of the living are as dead as the decaying body. Addie Bundren might be dead, but her wishes continue to drive her family. Actual death becomes relative, and the death of the soul is the only tangible death. Darl is not mad, yes eccentric, but his eccentricity is wrongfully mistaken for malevolence. He has removed himself from his family, from idolatry, and lives not in the corporal world, but within the confines of his own self. The hushed whispers are not about Darl, but the secrets that he might know about his town. He sees the idolatry and the false mothers. The secrets must die with Darl, and therefore he must be removed.

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.

Bag of Winds

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For every step that the Bundren family takes, they seem to take two steps backwards. Their entire journey is marred by terrible fortune and every place that they end up the family seems to lose something, much like the travels of Odysseus who loses men, ships, and everything else as he bounces from island to island trying to get home. Also like Odysseus who suffers much at the incompetencies of his own men, the Bundren family seems to open up their own bag of winds that drive them backwards both physically and mentally. There is a sense of retrogradation that runs through As I Lay Dying. As the family progresses and obtains help from their neighbors, they consistently find themselves in situation worse than the one they were in before. 

The sense of backwards motion is established frequently in descriptions of the world around the Bundrens. Faulkner details the motions of the buzzards and the stars against the backdrop of the smoke of the burning barn as retrograde. Vardaman states that the smoke “makes the stars run backward without falling (225) and that the “stars moved backwards” (223). “Motionless, the tall buzzards hang in soaring circles, the clouds giving them an illusion of retrograde” says Darl describing the buzzards (95). These buzzards are a constant presence in the novel and makes this sense of retrogradation even stronger. The world around the Bundrens seems to be moving backwards even as they advance toward their destination, creating a sense that the environment is pulling elements of their story backwards. 

The Bundrens seem to be at the mercy of something in the world around them that, even if it is somewhat self inflicted, always makes their effort to bury Addie that much more difficult by reverting any process they have made or help that they have acquired to an earlier and inferior state. They manage to get some mules from Tull that allows them to cross the river, but the mules die in the process and they are again without a team. Gillespie allows them to stay in his barn but Darl burns it down. Dewey Dell makes it to a doctor, but he is not a real doctor and feeds her turpentine and talcum powder and takes advantage of her. Cash’s leg heals and not only is it broken again during the trip but it also needs to be amputated. Jewel, who rode in on his beloved horse, now has nothing on which to ride back. Excluding Anse, the family is, by the end of the journey, in a state worse than the one in which they began.  

The backwards motion is also present in the internal narratives of the family, especially visible in the Cash sections. In the beginning of the novel, Cash is almost a carpentry automaton, mourning his mother in a seemingly detached manner as he diligently constructs her coffin. As the novel and the journey of the Bundren family progresses, Cash becomes much more introspective and perceptive as he comes to terms with her death. Here, Faulkner characterizes Cash in both the present, what  is occurring in the novel at that time, and the past, before the death of Addie. His true character and thoughts are seen clearly when his narratorial voice is not as clouded by grief.

Humor and Narrative

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In some ways, the fractured and experimental narrative style of The Sound and the Fury helps Faulkner to avoid pitfalls of melodrama. Though the story is in many ways overwrought and sensational, it must be filtered through non conventional narrative techniques which inhibit the types of tropes and familiar cliches associated with the gothic form.

Similarly, the collective narration of As I Lay Dying moderates the dark burlesque humor of the novel. The humor ranges from Cora’s many mistakes in her early narrative section, to Vardaman boring holes into his mother’s face to let her corpse breathe inside her coffin, to the sick irony of Dewey Dell’s rape, culminating in the final image of Anse returning to the family with new teeth and a new wife. The humor is over the top, but because the plot itself is buried beneath the competing narrations, thre reader must take few extra steps before the humor becomes apparent.

This technique of buried irony contributes to several themes throughout the novel. The increasingly disastrous journey (the fire, the cemented leg, the lack of a shovel) generates a dramatic irony that implicates both an authorial presence, and associates this presence with both a malevolent God and the backlash of violated Nature. The nearly slapstick comedy of ill and breaking and rotting bodies reinforces the novels central concern with the paradox of the “being” and the physical object which contains that being. Formally, the humor complicates the intent of the novel, frustrating tragic proportions but never foreclosing to potential tragedy of the family. 

The final “gag” of Anse’s return is the most blatant and, in some ways, the least effective. But the build up of Anse’s repeated desire for new teeth, and his mysterious loyalty to his wife’s wishes despite general laziness, lends a sense of inevitability to the final joke. The reader simultaneously can’t believe Anse’s callousness, and cannot imagine any other outcome to the journey. Humor, as a a technique buried beneath broken narration and the readerly task of constructing a coherent narrative, ultimately structures the characteristics of the Bundren family and the pitfalls of their journey. The humor of the novel successfully assimilates complex themes within a sort of ironic authorial omniscience and undermines the concept of authorial mastery by undercutting the seriousness of the novel itself. 

Eating The Wooden Face of Death

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Mary Rubi

They have wooden faces to match their wooden hearts, to make their wooden coffins. It’s a real shame that Addie Budren has to be so far from her people. Insistent and wanton ‘till her death, Addie wants to be buried in her family plot in the Mississippi countryside and will drive her family to madness. There is a clear sense of separation and distance between Addie and her family, her assertion in having her way and being buried away from her present home is a sign that in life she has already removed herself. Calling upon her children from her deathbed, she demands and says nothing otherwise. Her death is just another job to be done. Like plowing the field or milking a cow, the death of the wife and mother is a part of the daily routine. There is more passion in Kate’s account of cake baking than the arrangements made for the funeral. Kate, very proudly, claims that she has saved up so many of her ingredients that her cake cost her nothing to make. The eggs were given to her. Kate depicts no trace of anger or resentment when her rich ‘ole customer refuses the cakes because the party had been canceled. With a shrug of her shoulders, she’s more content with losing the sale because she hasn’t lost any profit. Not losing money is as important as gaining wealth.

The Budren boys can’t eat their mother, so the loss of Addie is not as exciting as eating cake. Her children are more interested in referring to their loss of three dollars than comforting their dying mother. Losing money is worse than death. Clearly, their decisions as a family are not based on love, but on survival. Their possible loss of three dollars creates a division among the brothers. With silent resentment, they attempt to grant Addie’s command. Cash doesn’t build a coffin for the love of his mother; he builds because it is his obligation to carry out the wish of a dying woman. There is little love in the Budren household. Dewey Dell mistakes quiet observance for affection when she watches Darl see his mother in her deathbed. (24) He’s staring into oblivion, but she thinks he his gaze reflects tender thoughts. There are numerous descriptions of the characters staring ahead, as if dead themselves. Their woodiness, of mind and action, is a reflection of their wooden splintered souls.

Sundquist supplementary reading

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I’ve added several critical articles to the AILD subfolder within our shared Dropbox folder.  For BAs, all these are optional, depending on your time and interest.  For MAs, I’d like you to read the Sundquist essay for next time; the others are purely optional.  For those interested in the representations of rural space and poor whites in the novel, the Lester article might be especially interesting.

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.