Darl's Essay On Cash And Cash

Darl is the more observant, outer-focused of the two brothers. He sees the world around him and describes it with vivid imagery, as in this passage as he watches his brother Cash: “Standing in a litter of chips, he is fitting two of the boards together. Between the shadow spaces they are yellow as gold, like soft gold, bearing on their flanks in smooth undulations the marks of the adze blade; a good carpenter, Cash is.” The reader can see what Darl sees and even feel the ethereal mood that is set as the sun hits the wood in the places where trees don’t cast shadows. We learn a little bit about why Darl calls Cash a good carpenter as the tone and descriptive language paint him as such as he creates “smooth undulations” with his adze. Darl describes his brother in his narration in somewhat non-objective terms: “A good carpenter. Addie Bundren could not want a better one, better box to lie in.” Despite this show of bias, I still found Darl to be a reliable narrator because his accounting was descriptive enough for the reader to draw a good picture. The reader, in this passage, is left with the sound of Cash’s adze in our ears, “Chuck….Chuck…..Chuck.”

Cash is a different character.

He is more inner focused than his brother. He works on the task at hand that he approaches methodically and carefully. His tone and manner is objective as he simply details the steps and reasons for what he is doing: “6. In a bed where people lie down all the time, the joints and seams are made sideways, because the stress is sideways. / 7. Except. / 8. A body is not square like a crosstie. / 9. Animal magnetism. / 10. The animal magnetism of a dead body makes the stress come slanting, so the seams and joints of a coffin are made on a bevel.” The picture is clear and objective, with no hint of emotion or editorializing. We can see the coffin. This matter-of-fact delivery is also impactful in its describing the stark reality of building a coffin. Death itself is a cold, hard

fact.

Faulkner provides the reader with two narrators, two brothers with their own perspective on the same event. Darl observes the world around him and chronicles what he sees in a way that takes the reader on a journey with him through vivid imagery, a descriptive language that includes some bias in his subjective reflections. Cash see things as they are, very matter-of-fact, providing a factual, methodical look at the subject at hand, a subject that is also a cold, hard fact. In both cases, the result is an impactful sense of mood and tone as Addie Bundren’s coffin comes into being.