What's up? I decided to finally read this book--what I mean by finally is that I took this book with me to college and never once picked it up, mostly out of fear due to a section read from Absalom, Absalom!. But enough of that! This book starts with Addie--the mother of six of the narrators--who is on her deathbed. When she does die, the main story starts. Anse, Addie's husband, promised her that she'd be buried in Jefferson with her family. Well, her blood relatives--not in Anse's plot or what have you. So, Anse, with his four children (Darl, Cash, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman) and one child who he only thinks is his (I'm not really sure if he knows Jewel is his or not) make a trek there. The book is told through their perspectives (even Addie has a few chapters once she's deceased!); it changes every chapter. A few other people have chapters, such as Cora (a lady of the town, familiar with the family), Addie's doctor, Jewel's real father, and a few others. I'm going to try to do my best with this post, as I had some trouble with this book. Worse comes to worse, I will delve into that dark abyss known as Sparknotes, but I'll let you know when I'm sacrificing my image.
So, like I said, when the book starts, Addie hasn't died yet, though she's darned close. Our first narrator is Darl, who sees his brother Cash making his mother's coffin. That chapter ends, and we then come to Cora--Cora's predicament is that she was given an order for two cakes for ten dollars--but right after the cakes were made the order was cancelled. It may seem stupid that I bring that up, but as I was writing about it I realized it's sort of important. Not exponentially, but something clicked...
Okay, so my next note isn't for a few chapters. Addie is still dying, and we're with Darl again, though that doesn't matter much, because what I noted concerns something Anse says: "'I mislike undecision as much as ere a man'" (17). The man clearly has a bad handle on language, so it's not really fair to be nitpicking, but... The prefix 'dis' means the opposite of--dislike, discomfort, et cetera--you 'opposite of like' somebody, you're feeling the 'opposite of comfort'. 'Mis' means wrong--I misunderstood, I understood something wrongly--incorrectly... And so on. So what Anse is really saying is "I like incorrectly not-decision"--even though what he's trying to say is that he hates indecisiveness. Though, we could pretend Faulkner had a meaning for making Anse say this as he did, instead of just imitating the local's speak--Anse waited weeks to send for a doctor for Addie, so by the time the doctor came, it was much too late. So he could be describing himself... because he preferred avoiding a decision, which was incorrect... Yeah. Just some wordplay. I honestly have no idea if Faulkner intended these things or I'm just making mountains out of molehills, but hey.
"It's a hard life on women, for a fact. Some women. I mind my mammy lived to be seventy and more. Worked every day, rain or shine; never a sick day since her last chap was born until one day she kind of looked around her and then she went and taken that lace-trimmed night gown she had had forty-five years and never wore out of the chest and put it on and laid down on the bed and pulled the covers up and shut her eyes. 'You all will have to look out for pa the best you can,' she said. 'I'm tired'" (30). First of all, this is Tull who says this--he's Cora's husband. Secondly, this doesn't seem to be such an unusual story of death for those days. I've heard similar stories about not-so-long-past generations, great uncles and aunts and great-grandparents and such. Thirdly, perhaps it seems absolutely morbid to me, but the idea that you could die like this intrigues me. There's a more... Logical, I guess you'd call it, side to me that says well, there was some disease in her, osteoporosis or TB or some wasting disease that just made her take to bed and die like that. But the other half of me says--what if there wasn't? What if she really did say, I have had enough. I have done my time. The time for sleep is now. And then decide just like that--to will herself to death? The idea of someone being able to do that--not even in the sense of having the willpower, just having the ability to do it--fascinates me. I cannot comprehend it.
Another interesting bit about this chapter is that Vardaman catches a fish and brings it back to the house. Anse demands that he clean it, and Vardaman struggles about to take the fish out to kill it. According to Anse a chapter or two later, Vardaman chopped it up with an axe--when he comes in the house he is up to his wrists and blood and comments on how it was full of guts and blood, like a pig. (A literal pig.) Why would this be important? During the rest of the book, after Addie dies, Vardaman's inner monologue constantly repeats--"My mother is a fish" (84). He didn't murder her, but perhaps he felt like he had--or, rather, what I'm more likely to subscribe to, his mother like a fish or a pig is full of that same blood and guts, or that she can in fact die like the fish has die. Or that because the fish suffered, flopping around and gasping for air and all of that, it is like his mother. But mental degradation appears to be apparent because... Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, but what the hell. Later on, the family attempts to ford a river so they can continue moving the body. Holes have been cut into the coffin so Addie can 'breathe'. The coffin slips into the water and Vardaman panics, he says she has escaped and he knew she would because, again, she is a fish--she got out through one of the holes and swam away.
"'Do you know she is going to die, Jewel?' It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end" (39). Obviously this is from Jewel's perspective. I'm not sure exactly what he means--obviously it takes two people to make you. But one--it takes one person to die? It takes one person to die achieve what? To realize that it takes to people to make you? To realize the importance of that? Importance of life?
"Too bad the Lord made the mistake of giving trees roots and giving Anse Bundrens He makes feet and legs. If He'd just swapped them, there wouldn't ever be a worry about this country being deforested someday" (42). This is Peabody--he is very critical of Anse, in pretty much all regards. His waiting for so long to call for help, his mistreatment of Addie (Anse abused her and alienated her--hence her affair), and so on...
"I can remember how when 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. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town" (43-44).
So I've skipped a little--Addie has just died, but Dewey Dell has other things on her mind--at first when reading it I thought this section was a big metaphor that I didn't understand, but now that I've finished it and gone back to it I've pretty much understood that that is not the case. Still: "He could do so much for me if he just would. He could do everything for me. It's like everything in the world for me is inside a tub full of guts, so that you wonder how there can be any room in it for anything else important in a big tub of guts, how can it be room in a little tub of guts. But I know it is there because God gave women a sign when something has happened bad. It's because I am alone. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone" (59). That is, she's pregnant. (How can a little tub of guts fit into a big tub of guts that already seems chock-full.) If she could feel the baby, she wouldn't be alone... And Lafe is he that could "do so much" for her. Like give her ten dollars to pay to get rid of something that he caused, hint hint. And if she wasn't alone, she'd be with Lafe--married--and "everybody would know it" (58). Dewey Dell's story seems to be mirroring her mother's. I expect her life won't differentiate too much from her mother's.
Also, at this point--what Dewey Dell means by "He dont even know" (59) is that Lafe hasn't been told yet. Not some deep metaphor or something. Just saying. (I'm writing things as I'm realizing them, so...)
So, I've skipped out for a few pages, but we know Addie has died. Darl and Jewel were away from home at the time on a delivery--Darl imagines that he can see what is going on at home, however. Cash and Tull are finishing up the coffin. Also, had to check Sparknotes for what this chapter was about--I was really confused because I knew he was still away, but then he was somehow seeing it... Uh, let's get to it, then.
"In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I dont know what I am. I dont know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not" (80). Jewel doesn't wonder about his existence, therefore he does not question it, therefore he is content and knows he exists. Darl, on the other hand, must suffer because he is smart enough to question his own existence and wonder about that.
"How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home" (81).
A few chapters later, we go back to Darl, and he says "I cannot love my mother because I have no mother" (95). He cannot because she doesn't exist anymore--she was his mother but now she's not because she doesn't exist.
Vardaman tells his brothers that his mother is a fish--I like his constant repetition of my mother is a fish, my favourite being "Pa shaves every day now because my mother is a fish" (102).
So, next bit is from Anse--they have just started their journey to Jefferson.
"It's a hard country on man; it's hard. Eight miles of the sweat of his body washed up outen the Lord's earth, where the Lord Himself told him to put it. Nowhere in this sinful world can a honest, hardworking man profit. It takes them that runs the stores in the towns, doing no sweating, living off of them that sweats. It aint the hardworking man, the farmer. Sometimes I wonder why we keep at it. It's because there is a reward for us above, where they cant take their autos and such. Every man will be equal there and it will be taken from them that have and give to them that have not by the Lord. But it's a long wait, seem's like. It's bad that a fellow must earn the reward of his right-doing by flouting hisself and his dead" (110-111). What I find interesting--this doesn't have to do specifically with the quote, the whole book in general rather--you'll notice that there are no apostrophes in the contractions. That's pretty common for stream of thought writings. But, you'll see that 'it's' has a contraction--make the changes that you like to language that will suit you, but you mustn't look uneducated. I'm not criticizing it--just pointing it out. Also, did you notice the apostrophe in seems? Taking apostrophes from what needs them and adding them to what does not--it reminds me of that archetypal Roald Dahl character, usually a constable, whose accent has him cutting off h from words like hatchet or heckle, and adding it to words like eggs (heggs) or what have you.
"I am the chosen of the Lord, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth. But I be durn if He dont take some curious ways to show it, seems like" (111).
The very next chapter is told from Samson's perspective. Samson owns a farm some ways down the road. He offers to take the troupe in for the night, and lets them stay in the barn. Samson's wife is disgusted that Addie's corpse (in coffin, of course) should be dragged across the countryside instead of just being buried. At this point, Addie smells pretty ripe, and Samson is kept up all night by the smell, or the memory of that smell. Anyway, the real reason I mention it is that this is the first encounter there is with a vulture--one, attracted by Addie's stench, apparently also took refuge in the barn.
So the family gets to the river. The bridge was waterlogged by the recent inclement weather, so the family has no choice but to ford the river. Before this occurs, though, Darl thinks about his brother Jewel. He falls asleep during the day all the time; it is suspected that he is travelling by night to see a married man. He has much nobler doings than that, but Darl and Cash have a good conversation beforehand. Darl is the first to speak in what is being recorded here: "'You mean, the safe things are not always the best things?' 'Ay; best,' he said, fumbling again. 'It ain't the best things, the things that are good for him....... A young boy. A fellow kind of hates to see....... wallowing in somebody else's mire.......' That's what he was trying to say. When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again" (132).
So after that, we go back to Tull, who with Anse's family is in the present and is going to try and cross the dilapidated bridge.
"When I looked back at my mule it was like he was one of these here spy-glasses and I could look at him standing there and see all the broad land and my house sweated outen it like it was the more the sweat, the broader the land; the more the sweat, the tighter the house because it would take a tight house for Cora, to hold Cora like a jar of milk in the spring: you've got to have a tight jar or you'll need a powerful spring, so if you have a big spring, why then you have the incentive to have tight, wellmade jars, because it is your milk, sour or not, because you would rather have milk that will sour than milk that wont, because you are a man" (139). For the first bit about the mule I imagine what Tull means is that the image appeared to, eh, secrete from the donkey's pores as sweat till it finally formed a full image. The bit about Cora I'm not so sure... What I originally thought upon the first reading of this was that the milk was a metaphor for life--when it sours it dies, so it is better to die than live forever--"because you are a man" (139), because it is how men's natures are, to die. But, now that I've reread it... The milk could be Cora, women in general. He'd rather one that soured (getting old, or becoming 'sour' towards him or her life with him) than one that did not--one that did not because she would be temporary, she'd leave, thus there'd never be a chance for her to sour, and there would not have been any real relationship, this would be more like a short affair... Hmm... Perhaps that doesn't hold much water either, but you can't say I'm not trying...
After this, the family begins bringing the wagon across the flooded and roaring river. The two mules drown, the wagon is hit with an errant log, thus Addie's coffin falls off the wagon and Darl dives after it and Vardaman is too preoccupied with the fact that his mother is a fish and she has escaped and Darl could not catch her.
Tull, after this fiasco, telling Cora of the incident later: "'They was going about it right and they would have made it if it hadn't a been for that log.' 'Log, fiddlesticks,' Cora said. 'It was the hand of God.' 'Then how can you say it was foolish?' I said. 'Nobody cant guard against the hand of God. It would be a sacrilege to try to'" (153).
During this fiasco's aftermath, we are set in Cora's past--she is thinking about a conversation she had with Addie once. Cora lectures Addie on sin and not-sin--she gets mad at Addie and says she is vain to judge and decide "'what is sin and what is not sin'" (167). Of course, what Cora doesn't realize is that she's damned herself, for she's making her own judgment... Well, no matter, Cora continues to complain: "She has had a hard life, but so does every woman. But you'd think from the way she talked that she knew more about sin and salvation than the Lord God Himself, than them who have strove and labored with the sin in this human world" (167). Of course what Cora cannot know is that Addie does know sin--Jewel was born from an affair, remember. And I don't know if I've mentioned this, but in the same spirit of The Scarlet Letter, the affair was with the minister. (Okay fine, Dimmesdale was the reverend, but that's pretty much the same thing, right?) Cora reveals that Jewel is standoffish and mean to his mother, despite the fact that he is most lavished upon by his mother and in fact his mother's favourite (I imagine because he was not born of her loveless husband), and says that Addie's only real sin is that she preferred Jewel over Darl, who many consider to be a little off in the head, but Cora seems to regard as a sort of prophet ("...Darl that was touched by God Himself and considered queer by us mortals" [168]). So when Cora says Jewel is Addie's punishment for her sin, she is unknowingly correct--but she asks where he salvation is, and of course points to God. Addie almost confesses her sin and cuts herself off, instead saying "'He is my cross and he will be my salvation. He will save me from the water and from the fire'" (168). Addie is talking about Jewel--again, pretty much like Pearl from The Scarlet Letter, only without creeping me out. Of course Cora gets upset and begins to pray for her soul right then and there.
And to rebut this, Addie herself has a chapter! At first she starts out with her early life (as a schoolteacher, and of whipping students when they misbehaved), and her marriage with Anse...
"And when I knew I that I had Cash, I knew that living was terrible and that this was the answer to it" (171). The way I see it, this goes back to what Addie said to Cora. Life is terrible, but you can take joy in raising a child. Fire, salvation. The two are so closely intertwined that perhaps they may even be said to be one.
"And when I knew that I had Cash, I knew that living was terrible and that this was the answer to it. That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride" (171-172). That is, to someone scared or in pain or rearing children, it isn't an empty word--it is. A word isn't necessary because it is, regardless of the word's existence or not. You see?
"I knew that it had been, not that my aloneness had to be violated over and over each day, but that it had never been violated until Cash came. Not even by Anse in the nights. He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn't matter" (172).
"And so when Cora Tull would tell me I was not a true mother, 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" (173). Though originally I was going to leave this be, I couldn't help but think of a biblical connection--the serpent is damned by God, he charges it to "crawl on your belly... all the days of your life" Genesis 3:14. A snake can't exactly cling, for it has no limbs, but because it has no limbs it can helped but cling to the earth and be mired in it. So... Yeah....
Addie's section ends as follows: "One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too" (176).
So--the coffin is recovered from the roaring waters. They take refuge in a man named Armstid's house. My note is just that they use the word victuals--which is actually pronounced 'vittles'. Oh Numba Two! Where would I be without you?
I also seem to have bled a little on this page. I don't remember that occurring, but a bloodied page from a previous owner I would have remembered... Hmm...
Okay, my next note doesn't come till much later. Cash broke his leg at the river, and it is quick becoming septic. They are closer to Jefferson, but they still must rest in a barn for the night. While the coffin reposes in the barn, Darl sneaks in and sets the barn aflame. Jewel saves the coffin ("'He will save me from the water and from the fire'" [186]). Anyway, Darl's arson has been the catalyst in making the final decision about sending him to an institution. Where we meet up with the book again is Cash coming to terms with and rationalizing why it must be that Darl will go to the institution.
First of all, Cash uses the word 'suspicioned'. Actually, that's apparently a real word. A real awesome word! I've got to start using that.
"Sometimes I ain't so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it" (233).
"It surprised me. I see all the while how folks could say [Darl] was queer, but that was the very reason couldn't nobody hold it personal. It was like he was outside of it too... and getting mad at it would be kind of like getting mad at a mud-puddle that splashed you when you stepped in it" (237).
So, they make it to Jefferson. Here, Dewey Dell goes to the local drugstore with ten dollars given to her by Lafe. What I said before about Dewey Dell's life mirroring her mother's--well, we know she's pregnant. A clerk there thinks she's cute, so he gives her any old medicine to drink and any old pills to eat and tells her it will cause an abortion. He also tells her the ten dollars will not be enough and she'll have to do something for him... So, it is most likely a shotgun wedding will occur because unless she's very lucky the medicine and pills won't work (the 'medicine' is said to smell like turpentine, so she might even die) and Dewey Dell will suffer under Lafe as Addie suffered under Anse.
So! Anyways, the book ends with Cash, shortly afterwards--their mother's body is hardly cold in the ground (well, you know what I mean) and the book ends with Anse bringing back a new wife to introduce to the children. What. The. Fu--I'm going to kill Anse. I revile him. He's a damned stupid fool from the start, and you start hating him because of what Addie tells you, and then how he treats the kids the whole while, and then--Ugh! He disgusts me. He wouldn't even look at his kids when he introduced the new wife to his kids. Cash doesn't seem that bothered, but Dewey Dell and Vardaman are shocked and I just want to pull my hair out by the roots. Seriously, what a worm! Ughhh. But, before I kill the world, my last note:
"...I would think what a shame Darl couldn't be to enjoy it too. But it is better so for him. This world is not his world; this life his life" (261).
Well, I have to say I liked this book. It's definitely of the sort that benefits from a second reading--I really only had to check Sparknotes a few times. Once you go back and reread bits, it all comes together rather nicely. (Not that I'm feeling brave enough to try to read you-know-what yet.) I don't really have much to say, I guess. I like Darl the best, I guess is my final comment. No, just kidding, my final note is that those are some crazy names. I kind of like the name Cash, though... For a collie dog or something. Okay, that's my final comment on the book. As far as final comments go, it's not my best, but hey.
MLA citation information: Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Vintage International: New York, 1990.
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab For Cutie
This post's cryptic song lyrics: You were right, I'm underground because sleight of hand won't separate your body from the dirt you're standing on today
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