The Mysterious Jewel in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner loves to keep the reader guessing. One of his favorite narrative techniques is to hint at a topic and raise questions and then leave the reader dangling. We are left with a void which we can not fill. The questions that the reader is left with will eventually be answered, but the reader will find the answers before Faulkner comes out and states what is by then the obvious. A good example is in As I Lay Dying where understanding the significance of Jewel is a major part of understanding the story.
Jewel is introduced in the first lines of the story, but his character is presented as being different and set apart. We know who Darl is right away. He is the narrator. What the relationship is between these two is unknown. The only clue that they may be brothers is their hats, but Jewel’s actions are set apart; “Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window”(4). The action of stepping through a window in a ‘single stride’ is difficult to imagine being able to do oneself, and yet Jewel does; “staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face”(4). I am asking myself, who is this guy? Faulkner has set Jewel apart from the other characters.
Faulkner heightens our curiosity about Jewel with the unusual scene with the horse. He captures his horse by diving into the air while the horse is rearing and pawing at him. He grabs onto the horse’s muzzle while in mid-air; “his whole body earthfree, horizontal, whipping snake-limber, until he finds the horse’s nostrils and touches earth again”(12). After he catches the horse he doesn’t put on a halter and lead the horse, or any way to control the anim...
... middle of paper ...
...eople who don’t know fear. Sin is just a word as well. Addie says that she has cleaned her house, and that was her life, that was getting ready to die. After Jewel was born she is faced with paying for her life’s mistakes; “I lying calm in the slow silence, getting ready to clean my house”(176). She understands the words of her father completely. The rest of her life was spent getting “ready to stay dead”(175).
Is the love hate relationship between Jewel and his horse similar to the relationship between Jewel and Addie? Cora tells us that Addie favored Jewel, but Addie says that she had two children that were hers before Jewel is born, and then she says, “I gave Anse Dewy Dell to negative Jewel. Then I gave him Vardaman to replace the child I had robbed him of. And now he has three children that are his and not mine”(176). Who are the three she is referring to?
In the early 1900s, the American South had very distinctive social classes: African Americans, poor white farmers, townspeople, and wealthy aristocrats. This class system is reflected in William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, where the Bundrens a poor, white family, are on a quest to bury their now deceased wife and mother, Addie in the town of Jefferson. Taking a Marxist criticism approach to As I Lay Dying, readers notice how Faulkner’s use of characterization reveals how country folk are looked down upon by the wealthy, upper class townspeople.
I would like to consider two comments made by men who had known Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi. One, a blacksmith, said that one day Faulkner suddenly left in the middle of a conversation with him. Faulkner’s only explanation later was that “when I think of something, I’ve got to go.” The other, a former friend of Faulkner’s speculated that he didn’t “think anyone knew who Bill really was, he was so moody…he was different from anybody else, seemed like.” The first comment indicates Faulkner’s unpredictability, possibly a humorous idiosyncrasy, but certainly not what is expected of a father. The second comment is intricately tied to the first. Because Faulkner’s behavior was unpredictable, often indicating that he was entirely self-absorbed in his own ideas and work, others found him to be distant.
In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner uses the characters Anse and Cash, and a motif/symbol in "My mother is a fish," to reveal the psychological and societal problems of the twenties and thirties. Written as soon as the panic surrounding the stock market in 1929 started, Faulkner is reported as having, “took one of these [onion] sheets, unscrewed the cap from his fountain pen, and wrote at the top in blue ink, 'As I Lay Dying.' Then he underlined it twice and wrote the date in the upper right-hand corner"(Atkinson 15) We must take care to recognize Faulkner not as a man of apathy, but one of great compassion and indignation at the collapse of the economic foundation of the U.S. This is central in appreciating the great care with which he describes the desolation and poor landscape of Yoknapatawpha County, which is where As I Lay Dying takes place.
In the beginning observations of this story, I learned the unique set of structure used. She started of early in the story stating “43% of American’s who died last year were burned instead of buried”. This represents the idea that there is a significant change in the way we dispose our bodies. The author also introduced a change of traditional methods to modern methods in the structuring of the text. Authors key focus was cultural change. Readings show that people who don’t believe in Christ(Atheism) rose thirteen percent in 2012-2013. This change and rise resurrected ne ideas about our bodies. Traditionally people will get buried as form of laying your body in the ground for the coming of Christ. Since the rise of atheism, however, people think as they don’t need to bury themselves and can use an alternate way they feel that suits them and their body when they
William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying takes place in the fictional town of Yaknapatawpha, Mississippi in the 1920’s. It is set in the summertime in the ‘deep south’, which had continual dry and hot conditions. The novel tells of the quest of the Bundren family to bury Addie Bundren in Jefferson, where her family was buried. The Bundren family goes through many unexpected trials on this journey, but still manages to bury Addie where she requested. Among her children, were two of her four sons, Darl and Vardaman. They both had different perspectives and ways of understanding people and Addie’s death. Darl and Vardaman’s perspectives differed widely because of the age difference and maturity levels.
Addie Bundren, was the mother to the Bundren kids and wife to Anse Bundren. Addie appeared sick in the beginning of the novel and progressed quickly than expected too and
Klaassens, Mirjam, Peter Groote, and Paulus P. P. Huigen. "Roadside Memorials From A Geographical Perspective." Mortality 14.2 (2009): 187-201. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Apr. 2014
In 1965 President Johnson signed both Medicare and Medicaid programs into law (Nile, 2011). According to Medical news today, “Medicare is a social insurance program that serves more than 44 million enrollees as of 2008” (MediLexicon International Ltd, 2011, para2). It cost about $432 billion or 3.2% of GDP, as of 2007(par2).Medicare is broken down into parts, Part A is hospital Insurance Part B is medical Insurance, and Part D is Medicare prescription drug coverage (medicare.gov). Like we previously stated Medicare is a health insurance for people who are 65 and older, people under 65 with certain disabilities, and people of any age with End- Stage Renal Disease. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program of medical assistance for low income persons (Benefit.gov). It is administered by the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS) and Illinois Department of Public Aid (IDPA). Medicaid serves about 40 million people as of 2007; it cost $330 billion, or 2.4% of GDP, in 2007.(par.2) “In Illinois you may be eligible for Medicaid if you are a child, pre...
These requirements overlap between the two and some beneficiaries do qualify for both benefits. This means that Medicaid is sometimes used to help pay for Medicare premiums and those who do quality for both programs are considered to be “dual eligible” and will usually enroll in both programs in order to cut personal costs. Medicare and Medicaid both have their financial woes, each have their burdens, a...
Medicaid is an assistance program for low-income people regardless of age. A federally mandated program, Medicaid is run by state and local governments under the established federal guidelines. Income and resource levels are the primary means for each state to determine eligibility with the level varying from state to state. Eligibility is also affected by other factors such as age, whether you are pregnant, if you are blind or have other disabilities, and U.S. citizenship or lawful immigration status. Some states req...
the story is played out. Faulkner does not use chronological order in this short story. Instead, he uses an order that has many twists and turns. It appears to have no relevance while being read, but in turn, plays an important role in how the story is interpreted by the reader. Why does Faulkner present the plot of this story in this manner? How does it affect the reader? What does the convoluted plot presentation do to this story? How might the story be different if the plot was presented in chronological order? These are a few questions that have come to my attention while reading this story. I would like to give my opinion on this backed by evidence from the story itself.
By reading closely and paying attention to details, I was able to get so much more out of this story than I did from the first reading. In short, this assignment has greatly deepened my understanding and appreciation of the more complex and subtle techniques Faulkner used to communicated his ideas in the story.
Life always ends in death. Death is something most people do not like to think about but is inevitable. Other people give extensive thought and planning into what will actually happen to their mortal body. As long as we live, difficult decisions and choices must be made; even what we want to happen to our bodies after we die. Societies no longer just bury or cremate; corpuses are preserved, reused, and recycled. The United States of America as well as other countries offers traditional, unorthodox, and unusual disposal options which are influenced by culture, religion, or cost factors.
"William Faulkner (1897-1962)." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 97. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. 1-3. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Hempfield High School. 31 March 2010.
Archaeologists, however, have the tendency to categorize burial practices as either normal or deviant. This categorization can be misleading as it implies there is a right or wrong way to bury the dead.