A number of questions arise from this. The first is how on earth the Bundrens are getting home. Besides the issue of space, as well as the preservation of whatever may remain of Cash's leg, the bridge is still most likely out. It was hard enough to get across the river before, with Darl and Cash more able to help with the wagon. I don't see that wagon, seemingly about to break apart as it is, getting across the river. Best case scenario, I'd imagine the wagon being left behind (along with Cash's tools and anything else in there), and everyone somehow making it across.
Assuming the Bundrens get back home to their farm, then what happens? Darl and Cash can't work for obvious reasons, and poor Anse will die if he sweats. Vardaman seems too young, Dewey Dell most likely won't be able to work with her pregnancy, and I seriously doubt that the new Mrs. Bundren will be helping out with that sort of work either. Poor Jewel will, assuming he's still intact after the journey home, have to do all of the work. Anse might be able to get other people to help him; from what others say about him he seems pretty good at that. Or, they could move and try to pursue more reasonable opportunities. Except for the fact that humans were built upright, like trees, so there's no way the lovely pater familias of this family will let them do so.
And then, assuming that the Bundrens, who had a hard enough time with three able workers, are able to make due with one (probably unhappy worker without his beloved horse), there's still the issue of raising a newborn child. Dewey Dell was never able to get her abortion, and I doubt Anse will sell his teeth to try to pay for one, nor will the family have the ability to part with enough to somehow get one (assuming they can find someone willing to do the job). How is this family going to raise a newborn, on what meager supplies they have? And even if this child survives, what kind of a person will they end up growing up to be with this sort of a family?
Having to consider what happens next without actually reading what happens and observing it firsthand just underscores the difficulty and stubbornness of the journey as a whole. In reality, the sensible thing to do would have been to bury Addie in a closer town, such as New Hope. Instead, the Bundrens, primarily Anse, decided to go out of their way to make a perilous trip to Jefferson, which ends up being very costly. Despite Anse being the only one who looks favorable in the ending, I almost think that it paints him in a bad light, as it shows how his actions have dealt so much misfortune upon the rest of the family, and the large gap between his outcome and the state of the rest of the family, especially Cash and Dewey Dell, underscores this.
ReplyDeleteReading this just made me hate both Anse and Addie so much more. Anse says "ain't no luck in turning back" and for the most part I agree. There ain't no luck except for you keep your family out of harm's way. To Anse, a promise to a dead woman is more important than the safety and livelihood of everyone in your family. And this makes me so angry at Addie because she ruined her childrens lives just because they accidentally happened to be born.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I also think that both Anse and Addie are more focused on themselves than anyone else around them. Addie doesn't even think about the fact that the kids will have to go along with Anse to bury her (even her beloved Jewel). Of course, she probably couldn't have anticipated all of the events in the journey, but I still think her revenge was very short sighted.
DeleteIt seems to me that selfishness is a major theme in the novel. Most of the characters are very self-centered and have difficulty thinking past their immediate problems. Anse and Addie are the most notable examples of this, but Cora, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman also seem trapped inside of their own perspectives most of the time. The only real exception to this trend is Darl, who visits other people's perspectives so often that he can't provide us with his own opinions. Is this part of the reason why he breaks down in the end?
DeleteThis is cool! I never really considered what would happen after the novel. But you're right--my gosh, the kids will be miserable. I feel so bad for Dewey Dell, especially--who up until this point, hasn't even told anyone about her pregnancy. Faulkner probably stopped the book there because it would feel more tragic than comic after that.
ReplyDeleteI also was very concerned about what lies ahead for the Bundrens. What will happen to Darl? Will he ever be able to see his family again? How will that affect the working dynamic of the family, with one of the only people who actually did work now gone? Faulkner leaves a lot up in the air, and I definitely think it leaves the reader more unsettled at the end of the book.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I also thought about what would happen next, and honestly didn't really want to know because the way it looks it would probably be pretty depressing. The loose ends that Faulkner decided to leave with this novel was an interesting choice, and I feel like it kind of reflects the realistic and unsettling tone that the book as a whole gave me.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about the charters' lives after the end of the novel. The real struggle is yet to come. The rushed description of the burial highlights the fact that the end to their struggles does not accompany the end of their intended journey. Just like you, I liked the place where Faulkner ended the novel. I like to think of the novel as a coming of age story for each of the kids. Although they are forced into learning the harshness of the real world, they each have maturity that they did no possess at the beginning of the novel. This is best illustrated when Cash struggles to grasp Darl's predicament and the concept of sanity.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Nathan! I think you very well summed up just how detrimental to their lives this journey has been and it makes Anse seem all the more selfish to our eyes. Throughout the book I have also been wondering why the three older boys are even still in the house, and what will happen to Anse, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman once they finally do go off and get married. Since Jewel is the only one who is able to work, Anse will probably continue to mooch off of Tull until Vardaman is old enough to do all the work himself.
ReplyDeleteWhen you compare As I Lay Dying to the Odyssey they actually end in pretty similar circumstances. At the end of the Odyssey everyone is about to go to war to take revenge for the murder of their son, and it seems that the whole journey is going to end in failure. Similarly, at the end of this book everything is in chaos and it ends worse than it started. Luckily at the end of the Odyssey Athena solves the problem and makes everyone forget everything. Faulkner on the other hand leaves the story with a gloomy future, which I think implies the fiasco style journey even more.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the ending of the book was not very satisfying, and I wouldn't really want to know the ending of this story either. However, I think there are some things at the end of the story that are supposed to be satisfying. For example, we could take Anse as the hero (although I thought all of his children were way more heroic than he was and I thought that Anse was a selfish and annoying character). We do end up with a win-win situation for him and Addie: Addie gets to be buried as far away from Anse as possible and causes him a lot of trouble in the process, while Anse gets a new wife out of the deal. In addition, we finally get a reliable narrator, Cash. Even though Darl seemed reliable before, there was always definitely something eerie about him, so it's nice to have Cash as a coherent narrator at the end.
ReplyDeletethe unsatisfying ending of As I lay Dying reminded me of the Odyssey when Athena tried to solve the problem of every young man on the island being dead by just erasing all of them from memory. I think that in some ways, it wasn't all negative -- I agree with what's already been said about Cash maturing, and Addie escaping from Anse. But I also agree with your points about Dewey Dell's future not looking so great as an single mother in the Bundren family.
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