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

Tull describes his view of the disaster in the river. He sees Darl jumping from the wagon as it turns over and Cash fighting to keep the coffin from slipping. In the end, Jewel and his horse are the heroes of the day. The horse pulls Cash out of the water. Jewel has managed to fasten his rope to the wagon and keep it--and Addie's coffin on top of it--from being pulled downstream by the current.

37. DARL

Darl describes the aftermath of the disaster, as the family tries to recover on the far bank of the river. He provides a touching look at the solidarity of the Bundrens and their helpful neighbor, Vernon Tull.

It's an hour after the crossing. Cash lies still on the ground. The wagon has been hauled ashore, the coffin still lying "profoundly" on the wagon bed.

NOTE: A VIOLENT PRESENCE In an aside, Darl tells why the family chocked the wheels of the wagon carefully. On the wagon, it seems, "there lingered somehow... that violence which had slain the mules...." The only thing on the wagon is Addie in her coffin. Could Faulkner be suggesting that there's something violent about Addie's character we have yet to learn about?

Vernon and Jewel dive for Cash's tools. Vardaman, Darl, and even Dewey Dell help. Anse just stands and watches, mournfully, now and then walking down to gaze at his dead mules. As they find the tools, one after another, they set them down beside Cash like offerings. Toward the end of the chapter, you learn that Cash's leg is broken.

NOTE: DEWEY DELL AND THE EARTH The section ends with a passage that identifies Dewey Dell, once again, with the fertility of the earth. Her "wet dress shapes... those mammalian ludicrosities which are the horizons and the valleys of the earth."

38. CASH

After spending a section describing Cash's visible anguish, Faulkner composes this brief and sudden section like the punch line of a joke. Lying there, you realize, Cash's concerns are not at all those of his family. His concerns are personal: an obsession with his craft, and with the way the coffin failed to balance properly on the wagon. Brief as it is, the section buttresses the novel's theme that people are isolated from one another even when they are united in a common purpose.

39. CORA

Sections 39 to 41 are flashbacks. Faulkner takes your attention away from the journey while Cora, Addie, and Whitfield reminisce. The three sections are tied together as a unit. Notice, as you read them, how each one introduces the next and comments on the others.

Almost from the start, Cora sounds like Elihu--the fourth speaker in the Book of Job who accuses Job of arrogant pride. Cora believes that Addie takes "God's love and her duty to Him too much as a matter of course, and such conduct is not pleasing to Him." When Addie says, "My daily life is an acknowledgment and expiation of my sin," Cora explodes. "Who are you, to say what is sin and what is not sin? It is the Lord's part to judge; ours to praise His mercy...."

She doesn't stop to ask--as you should--what Addie's sin is. Instead, she shoots ahead, missing the point. "Just because you have been a faithful wife is no sign that there is no sin in your heart," she says. "I know my own sin," Addie says. "I know that I deserve my punishment."

Again, Cora has too much momentum going to ask--as you should--what that punishment is. Addie's sin, Cora feels, is favoring Jewel instead of Darl, and her punishment is not having that love returned. "Jewel is your punishment," she says. "But where is your salvation?"

Watch how Addie replies. "He is my cross and he will be my salvation," she says. (By "cross," she means her burden--not her sin. The reference is to the cross that Christ carried to his crucifixion.) "He will save me from the water and from the fire," she goes on. "Even though I have laid down my life, he will save me." Addie is of course speaking of Jewel.

NOTE: CORA'S CONFUSION Addie's boast that Jewel will be her salvation echoes two lines from the 66th Psalm in the Old Testament. "We went through fire and through water; but thou [God] brought us out into a wealthy place." The next line is a paraphrase of a section of the 23rd Psalm: "Though I walk through the valley of death, I fear no evil, for thou [God] art with me."

Cora thinks Addie is referring to God and not to Jewel. When she realizes her mistake, she is dumbfounded. She is sure that Addie is mocking God--that "she had spoken sacrilege." It's a confirmation of all Cora's fears: Addie is "lost in her vanity and her pride" and has "closed her heart to God and set that selfish mortal boy in His place."

Cora views "Brother Whitfield"--"a godly man"--as her ally. She talks about "that summer at the camp meeting" when Whitfield "wrestled with [Addie's] spirit, singled her out and strove with her vanity in her mortal heart."

NOTE: CAMP MEETINGS Camp meetings were popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were revival meetings, when families set up tents in the country for a couple of weeks and mixed vacation with religion. Evidently Whitfield spent a lot of time with Addie at one such gathering.

What do you think about Cora's report? Do you think that Addie's sin is loving Jewel, and that her punishment is not getting his love in return?

Addie makes clear in the next section that she has another sort of sin in mind. She is not so clear about her punishment.

Some readers think that maybe Cora is on to something when she says, "Jewel is your punishment." Does Addie seem to agree with Cora when she compares Jewel to the cross Christ had to bear?

NOTE: SIN IN AS I LAY DYING It's not always easy to figure out just what Faulkner's people mean when they talk about sin. Actually, they're talking about two sorts of sin: (1) the sin of the human race, traceable to Adam's original sin; and (2) personal sin. According to the Bible, Adam was the first man. His sin--the original sin--was to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. For this disobedient act, Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden, together with Eve, who tempted him to eat the fruit. Adam's sin left all humans with a tendency to sin, or act unethically, requiring constant vigilance on the part of the individual.

As to personal sin, some Christians divide all human acts into good, indifferent, or bad. Faulkner's people, like most conservative Christians, believe that all acts that are not positively good are sinful. There can be no indifferent act. Thus, to Cora, favoring Jewel over her other children is sinful. An even worse sin is idolatry--setting up a human in God's place. It is precisely this sin that Cora feels Addie commits. The sin brings Cora to her knees, begging God to forgive Addie and redeem her, or deliver her from sin.

Christians call that deliverance "salvation." Addie is convinced that Jewel will be her salvation--not realizing, perhaps, that he would save her quite literally. Another irony is that when he "saves" her, she is already dead--beyond physical, if not spiritual, salvation.