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"AS I LAY DYING".   Term Paper ID:22376 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Analyzes Addie's chapter as depiction of her consciousness as the core of the Bundren family together and its eventual deterioration.... More...

6 Pages / 1350 Words 1 sources, 8 Citations, TURABIAN Format $24.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Analyzes Addie's chapter as depiction of her consciousness as the core of the Bundren family together and its eventual deterioration. Paper Introduction: Addie's chapter, in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, shows us the undiluted innerworkings of the consciousness of the mother and the core of the Bundren family. The chapter and the dry, angry, miserable, cynical tone of the woman gives the reader to knowledge of what has brought and held this unhappy family together as well as what will tear it apart once the children have finished carting Addie's rotting body to Jefferson. Just as Addie had infected her children with a set of perceptions in which they have become imprisoned, Addie herself is prisoner to the perception left her by her father: "I could just remember how ny father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time" (169). Addie, of course, is in the last stages of dying as she mediates on her entire life in this chapter. She is haunted by the lifelessness Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Her children,unloved, are completely lost. Her "realism" is nothing more than a perhapsinevitable outcome of the forces which created her---her miserable, life-hating father, her weak husband, and the strict moral code by which shelives and dies and by which she so harshly judges herself, her life, herfamily, and finally all life. . We may finally choose not to judgeher, to leave it up to God, to rather have compassion and/or pity for her,believing that she cannot help who or what she is and what she does or doesnot do with respect to her children. But I had been used to words for a long time. Addie's chapter, in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, shows us theundiluted innerworkings of the consciousness of the mother and the core ofthe Bundren family. She sees herself as the victimof Anse, of God, of life itself and all its senseless cruelty: I believed that I had found it. Addie, on the other hand, sees her own suffering and the sufferingshe has instilled in her children, and yet increases her determination notto show her love for them or for life. Perhaps the reader might conclude that her family, Darl perhaps withhis affirmation in the madhouse, even Pa with his teeth and his new bride,has acquired something of meaning, something of liberation, as a result ofAddie's life and death, but it seems to this reader that these littlevictories are lost in the general sea of misery she has bequeathed to herhusband and offspring. Addie shows in this chapter that she believes she hasfound the answer to life, which is comprised of the acceptance of life'sharsh reality and death's inevitability. They do not have Addie's bitter philosophy tohold them together as she was held together to the end by that philosophy.It is inevitable that the family disintegrates after she dies and afterthey have taken her to Jefferson. . Of course,by "cleaning her house" Addie means not only literally, but also sufferingin silence as a result of doing one's duty as a woman and wife and mother.Of course, the essential duty she fails to fulfill is loving her children.Again, the question the reader must answer for himself or herself iswhether Addie was ever capable of such love. . At every opportunity, she closes herself off from feeling anythingfor her children, using the same style of expression---cold, dry, barren,determined to feel nothing, to intensify her philosophy that nothingmatters: And when I would think Cash or Darl that way until their names would die and solidify into a shape and then fade away, I would say, All right. However, she, like the bulk of herfamily, has no meaningful or restorative concept of spirituality or of aconsciousness beyond one's own pitiful confusion. I didnot ask for them. She claims her children as her own, as if Anse were merely a tool ofGod's cruelty aimed specifically at her, but even in claiming her childrenas her own, she finds no joy, no consolation, no redemption in thesuffering she believes they represent in her life. She has given them nothing of the lovethey needed, and, finally, not enough of her bitterness to allow them towithstand the bewildering and overwhelming onslaught of life's experiences. She has shut herself off from the light of life, from thepositive aspects of human existence, from love. I would think of him as thinking of me dressed also in sin, he the more beautiful since the garment he had exchanged for sin was sanctified (174-175). Addie, of course, is in the last stages of dying as shemediates on her entire life in this chapter. These factors force thereader to make decisions and judgments not only with respect to thetruthfulness of the conflicting accounts, but even more importantly to theemotional realities this family and its mother/center express. In the previous chapter, we have heardCora's account of how she feared for her mother's salvation and how shetried to get Addie to pray with her to save her from sacrilege (seeingJewel as her salvation) and damnation. Now Addie concludes her chapter withher own version of that same event: One day I was talking to Cora. She is as straightforward and honest about her hatredof life, others and herself as she can be, but her honesty is not the sameas truth. That was my duty to him, . That is, this chapter shows that Addie is wellaware of what she has done, so we can fairly conclude that at some pointshe became aware that she was poisoning her family with her bitterness andhatred of life, sex and even love, and so could have made at least somechoices and taken some action to reverse the poisoning process. Love, he called it. BibliographyFaulkner, William. . So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn't matter (172). It doesn't matter what they call them (173). The chapter is the heart of the book because it shows in aconcentrated form the shriveled soul of the woman at the center of thefamily. Addie's take on life and death might be considered realistic, butwhen we compare her consciousness to that of the crumbling Darl, we see thebarren nature of the mother. It doesn't matter. 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). . . However, Addie in this chapter demonstrates all too clearly that shebelieves her only redemption to be based on an increasingly willful denialof life. Shewillfully creates a batch of children who are themselves doomed to repeather miserable life in their own ways. . Addie, like her husband and like each of her children, is a beingassaulted by her own sense of futility, of meaninglessness, of the lack oflove. And . Then I gave him Vardaman to replace the child I had robbed him of. Is she responsible, or is she in fact the victim ofcircumstances, of gender, and of a cruel God, which she claims to be? The sin the more utter and terrible since [Anse] was the instrument ordained by God who created the sin, to sanctify that sin He had created. She speaks of her husbandin a style as dry as a stick and as determined to state her case for themisery of life as she is to beat a sense of awareness of her into herstudents: He had a word, too. . The style of thought given Addie by Faulkner reflects perfectly herbitter philosophy: "In the afternoon when school was out," she begins, "andthe last one had left with his little dirty snuffling nose, instead ofgoing home I would go down the hill to the spring where I could be quietand hate them" (169). The "sin" of Addie is not sex, or even her miserable philosophy oflife and death, but the damage she has inflicted on her children. Does thereader judge Addie for helping to fashion a miserable and bewilderedfamily, or does the reader finally yield to a sense of compassion, or atleast pity, for this lost family? . . However, a word must be said about the passion always lurking underthe surface of this woman's strict bitterness, just as a powerful pressureexists under the lid of a boiling pot. 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. Her reflection on sex with herhusband is a high point of the chapter, demonstrating not only the hiddenpassion repressed in the woman, but also her crippled view of life as anexperience inevitable and profoundly sinful. . . . The chapter forces the reader, as does the rest of the book, toplumb his or her own soul and demands a human and spiritual response to aset of people who, aside from Darl, have no concept of selflessness oraffirmation of life. I have cleaned my house" (174; 176). Just as Addie had infected her children with a set of perceptions inwhich they have become imprisoned, Addie herself is prisoner to theperception left her by her father: "I could just remember how ny fatherused to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a longtime" (169). She is haunted by thelifelessness of her father just as she haunts her children with her ownbitter and hopeless dying and death. She sees her children asfactors in a ledger which must be balanced before she is ready to die: I gave Anse Dewey Dell to negative Jewel. . As I Lay Dying. And now he has three children that are his and not mine. The chapter and the dry, angry, miserable, cynical toneof the woman gives the reader to knowledge of what has brought and heldthis unhappy family together as well as what will tear it apart once thechildren have finished carting Addie's rotting body to Jefferson. This is the miserable, lost, bitter, cold, dry old woman whose bodyher children come together to cart to Jefferson to be buried. . New York: Vintage International,199 .----------------------- 7 . This is the dry, bitter style of a woman who truly believes thatnothing matters, nothing except doing one's duty as a woman---having sex,having babies, cleaning house, and dying: "I gave Anse the children. . Darl searches for the truth in confusion and goes mad as a result,yet he still remains affirmative in his attitude toward life and hisfamily. And then I could get ready to die (176). and that duty Ifulfilled. It isfinally up to the reader to decide in his or her own heart. However, because it is a novel ofconsciousness and self-knowledge, or the tragic lack thereof, we seem to beinvited by Faulkner to put some degree of blame on the mother for what hashappened to her children. . . I believed that the reason was the duty to the alive, to the terrible blood, the red bitter flood boiling through the land. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.