"Cliff Notes - As I Lay Dying" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

NOTE: SENSE OF COMMUNITY This remark is a reminder that the Bundrens and their poor white neighbors are part of a community. They are much like a family, looking out for one another, even for ne'er-do-wells like Anse. There's a sense of solidarity about them that's reflected in the way they extend helping hands to the Bundrens. The paradox--and a major theme--of the novel, however, is that none of these people can ever really communicate with each other, no matter how closely their lives are intertwined.

Watch Anse in this section. He is like a man transformed. Tull twice notes his dignity. How can you account for it?

Note Whitfield, too. You'll get a closer look at him in section 41, where you may have to revise the opinion of him you pick up here. Tull points out that his voice doesn't seem to belong with his body. The voice is "triumphant and sad"; the body, mud splattered, smaller than the voice.

On the way home, the Tulls pass Vardaman, who is fishing in a swampy pool. Do you suppose he's hoping to find his mother returned to life?

This section has some grotesque humor. They lay Addie backwards in the coffin to avoid wrinkling the flared skirt of her wedding dress. Then the women fashion a veil out of mosquito netting to hide the auger holes in her face.

Another bit of humor mocks Cash's precise mind. He describes his fall from a church roof as "Twenty-eight foot, four and a half inches, about."

NOTE: ITALICIZED SECTIONS Faulkner isolates two segments in italics here. The first segment contains assorted banter that Tull hears as he talks with Cash. The second section is a flash-forward. Faulkner uses it to tell you that it was three days before Darl and Jewel got the wagon fixed and loaded Addie onto it. That's a long time to keep a body above ground in July heat.

21. DARL

This is the first of three short sections that conclude the first part of the novel. Here, you see Darl taunt Jewel as the two approach their home three days after Addie's death.

Darl points out the buzzards that hang in the sky high above the house. They both know why the buzzards are there. Yet it seems Darl can't resist infuriating Jewel by saying, "But it's not your horse that's dead."

Jewel's mind is riveted on the horse he cannot see, shaping it in his mind. When they reach the barn, Jewel enters his horse's stall and pulls himself into the loft. His only sound has been an angry curse at Darl.

NOTE: JEWEL'S MOTHER AS A HORSE What does Darl mean when he says that Jewel's mother is a horse? Here are three interpretations you might consider:

1. With Addie dead, Darl has nothing he can love with the intensity that one might love a mother. Jewel does. He has a horse. Thus, Darl reasons, Jewel's mother is a horse.

2. Jewel yearned for an exclusive relationship with his mother--the sort he described in his monologue early in the book. Yet he couldn't have such a relationship, so he bought a substitute. The horse is his own possession, something so wild that no one else can approach it.

3. In Greek mythology, both Demeter, goddess of fertility and harvests, and Dionysus, god of fertility and wine, are associated with the horse. Dionysus, in fact, was also a god of the trees. Readers who see the "wooden" Jewel as a kind of Dionysus see the horse as his "fructifying [fruitbearing] spirit"--the fertilizing spirit that enables him to be virile. Faulkner was familiar with James G. Frazer's 1890 study of mythology, The Golden Bough, which called the horse "the fructifying spirit both of the tree and of the Corn." Demeter, goddess of harvests, was also known as the Corn-Spirit. The horse is thus Jewel's link to Addie, who many readers see as a sort of Demeter.

22. CASH

Cash was obsessed with building the proper "balance" into the coffin. Now he hopes to maintain that balance in transit. It seems he wants Darl and Jewel to carry Addie's coffin to the wagon in a way that will allow the coffin to "tote and ride on a balance." But Jewel, able to act only impulsively, orders his brothers to "Pick up!"

23. DARL

Darl describes the scene begun in section 22. Jewel rushes ahead with the coffin, leaving Cash limping behind. Jewel thrusts it onto the wagon. In "fury and despair," he curses Darl as the section ends.

24. VARDAMAN

Except for Jewel, who is heading to the barn, everyone is on the way to the wagon or in it. Anse orders Jewel to leave the horse home, but Jewel doesn't stop. "Jewel's mother is a horse," Darl says.

Vardaman still has it in his own mind that his mother is a fish. So Darl's comment sets off a charming discussion about their mother's and their own existence.

Anse is making a vain attempt to take charge. He doesn't like the idea that Cash is bringing his toolbox along, that Jewel wants to take his horse, and that Dewey Dell carries a package that she says contains Cora Tull's cakes. "It ain't right," Anse says. "It's a flouting of the dead."

All the while, Anse is no doubt thinking of the false teeth he wants. Vardaman has a hard time getting his mind off the electric trains he hopes to see.

Many novelists want their readers to relate to the situations they present. How is it possible for us to make connections with such far-out situations?