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

40. ADDIE

Many readers find this section the most revealing one in the novel. It is Addie's only monologue, and it ties together a lot of the novel's loose ends.

Addie begins with a reminiscence of her days teaching school. She was unhappy as a teacher, because like all children her pupils were self-absorbed. She hated them. She whipped them eagerly when they made mistakes.

What did she mean by that viciousness? What was her aim? Some readers feel that she was lonely, and that she hoped to break through her isolation by inflicting pain. "I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life..."

NOTE: "AND SO I TOOK ANSE" Like most interior monologues, this one is replete with non sequiturs--passages that don't seem to follow previous ones with any logic. (In Latin, non sequitur means "It does not follow.") One of the most baffling of these is the line, "And so I took Anse." Addie says it twice--the second time without the and--as a frame for the story of the courtship that led to her marriage.

Many readers think the line important. Addie does not say, "And so I fell in love with Anse," or, "And so I married Anse." So some readers feel that she saw Anse only as an object, like the switch she scarred her pupils with, and hoped to use him to break through her isolation.

But Anse never "violated" her "aloneness." It took Cash, her first-born, to do that.

In this section Faulkner explores at length one of the novel's major themes, the futility of words compared with actions. Words, to Addie, are without value. "Words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless," she says. The word love, "like the others," is "just a shape to fill a lack." Anse used the word love to describe what Addie knew didn't exist--real love between them.

With Cash, it was different. The love between mother and son was very strong, something both of them experienced. "Cash did not need to say it [the word love] to me nor I to him."

Obviously, action--something which is experienced, not just talked about--is the test of life to Addie. If something cannot be experienced, it cannot be alive. Thus, Anse is dead to her, just a word, "a significant shape profoundly without life."

Having Cash didn't end Addie's isolation. It only intensified it, leaving "time, Anse, love"--everything without meaning to her--"outside the circle" of her loneliness.

Darl was an unwanted child. When Addie learned she was pregnant with Darl, she was furious. She felt Anse had tricked her. So she decided to get revenge. She made Anse promise to bury her in Jefferson when she died.

NOTE: ADDIE'S MEAN-SPIRITEDNESS To some readers, these revelations help explain a couple of the novel's mysteries. Many readers trace Darl's oddness to the fact that his mother shunned him. According to this interpretation, Darl's rejection causes him to wonder if he exists, and it eventually drives him out of his mind.

Addie's concocting the journey to Jefferson as a form of revenge against Anse adds another dramatic irony to the novel. Suddenly you realize what Addie's survivors don't: that Addie may not have cared at all about being buried in Jefferson. Anse, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman have personal errands pulling them to Jefferson. Now we realize that Addie also had an ulterior motive--revenge.

It's a strange form of revenge. When you're getting back at someone, you want that person to know it. Not Addie. As she says, Anse "would never know I was taking revenge."

What do these revelations make you think about Addie?

In the final segment of the monologue, Addie describes her affair with Whitfield. This infidelity amounted to a series of passionate trysts in the woods, probably during the camp meeting that Cora refers to in section 39.

To some readers, her adultery was a defiant, rebellious act. To others, it was an attempt to reach outside of herself and experience the "terrible blood" of reality through sin--a "more utter and terrible" sin because it was committed with a minister.

Whatever the reason for it, the affair was Addie's sin. Jewel--in her view--was her punishment. Yet, she saw her redemption in the affair, too. Talking with Cora, you will remember, Addie called Jewel her "cross" and her "salvation."

NOTE: PARALLELS WITH THE SCARLET LETTER You might enjoy playing with the similarities many readers find between As I Lay Dying and Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, written in 1850. The Scarlet Letter explores through allegory and symbolism the problems of moral evil and guilt. The heroine, Hester Prynne, is, like Addie, caught in a loveless marriage to a man with a physical deformity. (Hester's husband has a twisted shoulder; Addie's, a humped back.) Hester has an adulterous affair with her minister--a man named Dimmesdale who, like Whitfield, is highly respected by his community. Hester names the child of this sin Pearl--her Jewel. Both Hester and Addie despise deceit but practice it to protect their lovers.

After Jewel's birth, Addie put her affairs in order--she "cleaned [her] house." She made amends to Anse by giving him two more children, Dewey Dell and Vardaman. (She always considered Dewey Dell, Vardaman, and Darl to be Anse's children, not hers.) This done, she "could get ready to die."

41. WHITFIELD

This section ends the flashbacks that began with Cora's soliloquy. It presents a picture of the sort of religiosity and emptiness of words that Addie detests.

Faulkner structures this section as a simple narrative. Whitfield hears that Addie is dying, and God tells him to confess his adultery to Anse. He risks his life to reach the Bundrens' house.

When he learns from one of the Tulls' daughters that Addie has died, he changes his mind about confessing. God, he reasons, "will accept the will for the deed."