Language, culture, and context all influence the connotation of a word. In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren questions the universal understanding of words by insinuating they unfairly represent the feelings or being of an individual. Within Addie’s internal monologue, she constantly ponders the meaning of words and names. In the passage on pages 172 and 173, Faulkner creates Addie Bundren’s character to prove humans inadequately utilize language to represent sincere emotions and beings.
The unfair and incorrect use of love prompts Addie to question her own love for others. Addie’s demeanor, unlike the other characters in the novel, develops into a highly intelligent character because of her thought process and questioning.
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Due to her tendency to question, she concludes the feelings associated with love can not be limited to four letters word. By Addie stating, “I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack” Faulkner reveals humans have become lethargic in expressing emotion (172). With the aversion to actually saying love, Faulkner insinuates how Addie seems uncomfortable using the word love and displays disgust in how the word has evolved. Through the diction of shapes, Faulkner creates a mental image of love to represents the tendency to say words without understanding the connotation. Addie speaks of Anse as a man incapable of understanding true love. Because he says love without emotion, Addie’s belief of missused words is affirmed. While speaking of her marriage, “it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn’t matter” (172). Faulkner reveals her understanding of love becoming nonexistent in their relationship and goes to suggest that Addie's does not associate Anse with love. This understanding aids Addie’s argument in insinuating that Anse merely uses love to fill the space of feelings for Addie. The use of “it” represents the unwillingness of even saying the word. She further goes to criticize Anse’s “love” stating the word has manipulated her own feelings. She feels as if “he had tricked me, hidden within a word like within a paper screen” (172). Faulkner’s simile creates imagery by representing Anse’s nonexistent love for Addie, who feels betrayed by this finding and therefore refuses to believe Anse’s love. However, Addie hardly questions the love of her eldest son Cash. She claims, “Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him” showing that Addie understands love to be too powerful to be explained in one word (172). The feelings exist reciprocally between her and Cash which provides closure that “love” exists in her life, however, a conflict arises in her inability to use such a compelling word. Through her newfound understanding of love, Addie concludes that love can be felt, but not said. With this conclusion, Addie confirms her belief of misused language through the words of Anse. Addie Bundren reveals not only with words, but with names do humans possess the need to fill a space of being.
Similar to love, Addie expresses confusion in the classification of names. She concludes that a name could not encompass one whole being and cannot define a person. Referring to Anse, Addie “would think: Anse. Why Anse. Why are you Anse” (173). By the short syntax, Faulkner creates a confused tone, yet the absence of question marks notes the controlled thoughts of Addie. Her willingness to question the use of names proves negligible to many as her deep thoughts separate her from others and display intelligence. With Addie’s own understanding of a name, she further goes to discuss the imagery by stating, “I could see the word as a shape, a vessel and I would watch him liquify and flow into it like cold molasses flowing out of the darkness into the vessel” (173). Faulkner’s use of a simile attempts to create an image for his readers. The imagery shows how names represent beings and are only created to fill a space; in no shape or form could a name embody the whole personality of a being. With this belief, Falkner goes to discuss the connotation of a name. With Addie’s depiction of Anse’s name, she compares him to a “jar [that] stood full and motionless: a significant shape profoundly without life like an empty door frame” (173). The use of a simile presents superb imagery which describes Anse very well. The diction of “full and motionless” references Anse and his passive attitude. Faulkner utilizes Addie’s judgement to create an unambiguous statement: names do not shape a human. Addie finally concludes her monologue with the altercation, “it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they call them” (173). Faulkner draws this conclusion to reiterate the fact a name does not define a person; just like love does not encompass the true feelings of a person. The repetition of “it doesn’t matter” fully encompasses Addie’s feelings on the matter as she concludes the
names we provide humans exist only for the sake of confusion. For if names did not exist, this world would become more hectic and unorganized. Addie’s rant on the meaning of names presents insight to Faulkner’s audience on the superficialities of the human race. Words and names continue to become less and less meaningful. Faulkner’s passage on pages 172 and 173 concludes that shallow and unemotional beings are ubiquitous as the definition of words has become overgeneralized. Love leaves room for interpretation. Anse displays feelings for Addie which proves love can be said, but the meaning behind the world can be misinterpreted. Names reveal the desire to define a being, while Faulkner reveals a name could hardly define one being. Faulkner dwells on the universal issue of misinterpretation to demonstrate that words and names squelch the need for closure by providing a generalization to compensate for the spaces in life.
Janie, lead character of the novel, is a somewhat lonely, mixed-race woman. She has a strong desire to find love and get married, partially driven by her family’s history of unmarried woman having children. Despite her family’s dark history, Janie is somewhat naive about the world.
Janie and Arvay respond to their men in similar ways as well. Both women swing from extremes of doubt and distrust to passionate, all-encompassing love for their husbands. Moreover, both women reconfigure themselves to adjust to the man’s world, as when Janie moves to the Everglades with Tea Cake, and when Arvay goes out to sea with Jim on his fishing b...
It is not that we are selfish, but that we only see the world from our own point of view. We only feel our own emotions, and not others. Language has been used a tool used to communicate emotions and thoughts to others, but that is not its true form. Faulkner illustrates the track of the human mind and the inadequacy of human language as communication, through the grief and interactions of Rider.
... Janie is a strong independent woman, who lives in a society that does not encourage that kind of behavior in women. During the novel she is told what to do, how to do it and at one point who to marry. She struggles with her growing unhappiness until she finally meets her true love. Bibliography Shmoop Editorial Team.
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, readers are introduced to Emily Grierson whose character was highly respected in her society but for some mysterious reason fell off the grid. The other people in her community became curious as to what was going on in her life and any effort to find out the truth had proved to be futile. This journal seeks to show the narrator’s view of the Miss Emily’s story, as the narrator would refer to her due to the first person plural point of view the story was written in. Consequently, the sense in telling the story should be noted, as denoted by the title and why he would constantly use “we instead of “I”. Furthermore, the journal shall assess the effects on the overall story and the character of the narrator.
Through her three marriages, the death of her one true love, and proving her innocence in Tea Cake’s death, Janie learns to look within herself to find her hidden voice. Growing as a person from the many obstacles she has overcome during her forty years of life, Janie finally speaks her thoughts, feelings and opinions. From this, she finds what she has been searching for her whole life, happiness.
6. The first section of this essay focuses on the background stories of Alexie’s father and his childhood. It presents the beginning of Alexie’s habit of reading in an amused tone, showing a lighthearted image without mentioning the hardship he has experienced. However, Alexie starts to divide this passage in paragraph
As the novel begins, Janie walks into her former hometown quietly and bravely. She is not the same woman who left; she is not afraid of judgment or envy. Full of “self-revelation”, she begins telling her tale to her best friend, Phoeby, by looking back at her former self with the kind of wistfulness everyone expresses when they remember a time of childlike naïveté. She tries to express her wonderment and innocence by describing a blossoming peach tree that she loved, and in doing so also reveals her blossoming sexuality. To deter Janie from any trouble she might find herself in, she was made to marry an older man named Logan Killicks at the age of 16. In her naïveté, she expected to feel love eventually for this man. Instead, however, his love for her fades and she beco...
During his journey to the burial site of his wife, he always was worrying about his well being before the family’s well being. The only reason that he decided to carry out Addie’s wish was that he wanted to improve his image by getting false teeth. He did care for his wife, but this caring was overshadowed by his love to improve himself.
Janie who continually finds her being defined by other people rather than by herself never feels loved, either by her parents or by anybody else. Her mother abandoned her shortly after giving birth to her. All she had was her grandmother, Nanny, who protected and looked after her when she was a child. But that was it. She was even unaware that she is black until, at age six, she saw a photograph of herself. Her Nanny who was enslaved most of her lifetime only told her that a woman can only be happy when she marries someone who can provide wealth, property, and security to his wife. Nanny knew nothing about love since she never experienced it. She regarded that matter as unnecessary for her as well as for Janie. And for that reason, when Janie was about to enter her womanhood in searching for that love, Nanny forced her to marry Mr. Logan Killicks, a much older man that can offer Janie the protection and security, plus a sixty-acre potato farm. Although Janie in her heart never approves what her Nanny forced her to do, she did it anyway. She convinced herself that by the time she became Mrs. Killick, she would get that love, which turned out to be wrong.
Understanding literary elements such as patterns, reader/writer relationships, and character choice are critical in appreciating William Faulkner's Barn Burning. Some literary elements are small and almost inconsequential while others are large and all-encompassing: the mother's broken clock, a small and seemingly insignificant object, is used so carefully, extracting the maximum effect; the subtle, but more frequent use of dialectal words which contain darker, secondary meanings; the way blood is used throughout the story in many different ways, including several direct references in the familial sense; how Faulkner chooses to write about poor, common people (in fact to the extreme) and how this relates to the opinions of Wordsworth and Aristotle; and finally, the relationship between the reader and writer, Faulkner's choice of narrator and point of view, and how this is works successfully.
Addie Bundren of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying has often been characterized as an unnatural, loveless, cold mother whose demands drive her family on a miserable trek to bury her body in Jefferson. For a feminist understanding of Addie, we have to move outside the traditional patriarchal definitions of "womanhood" or "motherhood" that demand selflessness from others, blame mothers for all familial dysfunction, and only lead to negative readings of Addie. She also has been characterized as yet another Faulkner character who is unable to express herself using language. This modernist view of the inexpressiblility of the creative spirit does not apply to Addie simply because she is not an artist; she is a woman and a mother, a person who feminist theorists would desribe as "traditionally mute." To characterize her using universalizing, humanist terms erases the way that her character is marked by her biological sex and by the gender roles she is forced to play. Addie is not a representative of humankind, or even of womankind, but an individual woman trapped in a partriarchal world that represses her desires and silences her; a woman who longs to find an identity of her own that is outside patriarchal constructions and not always definable in relation to the men and the children in her life. Most importantly, Addie is a character who is acutely aware of the linguistic and social oppression that traps her into a life she does not want.
Jewel, Addie's son by Whitfield, is 18 years old. Like Pearl, the product of Hester Prynne's adulterous affair in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, Jewel's name is a symbol of the value his mother places on him. The favoritism that Addie showed him is responsible for the antagonism between him and Darl. Jewel personifies Addie's preference for experience over words. He is always in motion. He expresses himself best through actions. When he verbalizes his love for Addie- in his single monologue- he does so with a violent fantasy about hurling down stones on outsiders. Elsewhere, he expresses his love for her through deeds, not words.
Pierce, Constance. "Being, Knowing, and Saying in the "Addie" Section of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying." Twentieth Century Literature 26.3 (1980): 294-305. JSTOR. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
Language is a tool to communicate with others, convey your ideas and meanings. Precise language is important because it can help you exchange ideas with others more efficiently without any chance of being misunderstood. Sometimes, different words are used to conceal the true meaning of the idea or action, such as passing away implicating death. In Lois Lowry’s “The Giver”, people living in the community are taught to use precise language to prevent any misunderstanding or misconceptions. But some words used in the community are not precise and are used to distort the true purpose of the word, in order to promote rules or ideas that the government does not want the general public to know. Three words in Lois Lowry’s “The Giver” which camouflage the true meaning of the words are release, assignment and stirrings.