WAI CHEE DIMOCK: So just want
to go back very
briefly to the title
of As I Lay Dying.
As you guys know, the title
is taken from The
Odyssey, Book XI.
And Odysseus has gone to the
underworld, and he's talking
to Agamemnon, who's telling him
about the circumstances of
his death and his murder by
his wife, Clytemnestra.
So, "As I lay dying, the woman
with the dog's eye would not
close my eyes as I descended
into Hades."
So this is the original
inspiring moment in many ways
for Faulkner, and today I'd
like to talk a little more
about the whole of modernism
and the epic tradition.
And obviously, we've read enough
of As I Lay Dying to
know that this is in many
ways an epic journey.
It is a journey, very heroic or
mock-heroic journey to bury
Addie, so it has all the
trappings of the epic.
It's an epic journey
on a small scale.
And it's also taking advantage
of two epic conventions.
We've seen just now that we hear
the voice of the dead,
and that's a very important epic
convention both in Homer
and in Dante.
And as we'll see, it is also a
very important convention in
As I Lay Dying as well, that
Faulkner is making very
liberal use of.
The other interesting epic
convention that I think is
being invoked in As I Lay
Dying is the uncertain
boundaries between the human
and the non-human.
And we have already actually
seen a little bit of that, so
I just wanted to refresh your
memory with something that we
discussed last time in
terms of there are
two kinds of speech.
Last week, we talked about the
social dialect on one hand,
and then on the other hand
the words with secrets.
And this is one instance
of words with
secrets coming from Vardaman.
So this is Vardaman talking
about something in the barn
after he has beaten Peabody's
horses and broken the stick.
"It is as though the dark were
resolving him out of his
integrity into an unrelated
scattering of components--
snuffings and stamping, smells
of cooling flesh and ammoniac
hair, an illusion of a
coordinated whole of splotched
hide and strong bones within
which, drenched and secret and
familiar, an is different
from my is."
Most likely, Vardaman is talking
about the horse, but
as we can see, especially as
we get closer to the end of
that passage, this being that
is "drenched and secret and
familiar, an is different from
my is," Vardaman seems to be
talking really more about his
brother, Jewel, than about
Jewel's horse.
And it's really hard to say when
the human ends and when
the animal begins in that
particular passage.
So this is something that we
see both in a small moment
like this in As I Lay Dying but
also in a very dramatized
moment when Vardaman says, "My
mother is a fish," where
obviously a strong analogy is
being established between
human and non-human.
We'll come back to that
statement on Thursday, but
today I'd like just to go back
a little bit and give you a
sense of this very long epic
tradition behind As I Lay
Dying by going back to
Homer and Dante.
And in Homer, I want to talk
about two instances: the
cyclops, obviously, we don't
know if he's fully human; and
an even more famous
episode is Circe
turning humans into animals.
And then Dante following through
with that convention
in the Inferno when humans are
turned into animals as
punishment.
So first of all, Homer in
Book IX of The Odyssey.
Odysseus and his men are trapped
inside a cage by the
cyclops, and the way that they
try to escape is by blinding
the cyclops, Polyphemus.
And so this is a moment that
is reproduced by just about
all the painters who paint that
scene, that episode in
The Odyssey, is the blinding
of the eye.
And we know that the cyclops
only has one eyes, so it's
relatively easy.
You only have to do it once.
So here's Odysseus blinding
the eye of the cyclops.
And we can see that the
cyclops seems bigger.
The main difference seems to be
in size and also the amount
of hair on him.
But otherwise, he has
a human form.
But we also know that he's
different, if only because he
has one eye in the center
of his forehead.
So he's not quite human, but
he's close enough, and that is
a condition that is especially
fascinating to epic authors.
Just give you a couple more
images of the cyclops.
Basically, it's the
same kind of idea.
He's much larger, has a lot more
hair, but otherwise has a
recognizable human form.
All the men trying to use that
spike to blind the cyclops.
And here is one more image.
So pretty much, there seems to
be a consensus in thinking
about the cyclops that he really
basically is like us.
But what is also interesting is
that after his eye has been
blinded, the cyclops wants to
make sure that when his sheep
leave the cage that there
wouldn't be humans hiding or
going along with them.
So he's counting all his sheep
as they go out, as they leave
his cave, even though he
can't really see them.
And he's surprised that his
favorite sheep is the last to
go, and he's the last to
go because Odysseus
is clinging to him.
But this is what cyclops
says to his sheep.
"Sweet cousin ram, why
lag behind the rest
in the night cave?
You never linger so but graze
before them all, and go afar
to crop sweet grass, and take
your stately way leading along
the streams, until at evening
you come to be the first one
in the fold.
Why, now, so far behind?
Can you be grieving over
your Master's eye?"
So not only is there a sense of
kinship between the cyclops
and his sheep, but this is one
of the earliest moments of
cross-species identification
that the cyclops obviously is
mourning the loss of his eye,
and he's imagining, he's
projecting that grief onto his
sheep and recreating kinship
on a different level.
Not just on a physical level
there's a connection between
humans and animals, but also
on the psychic level, on an
emotional level, there is
that kind of kinship.
So The Odyssey, I would say, is
one of the earliest moments
of a really interesting
cross-species imagination, at
least in this one moment.
So the better known moment--
and actually I would argue
it's less subtle than this--
is the transformation of
humans by Circe.
And here's Odysseus going after
her because she has
transformed one of his
men into this animal.
So we see many instances
of this.
And this is an amazing image,
this vessel with all the
animals in Circe's house.
And I think that we recognize
that actually there's a strong
Egyptian influence.
These images look very Egyptian,
and there is in fact
constant traffic between ancient
Greece and Egypt.
So it's part of the impetus for
thinking about humans and
non-humans as coming
from Egypt as well.
And just to complete our
discussion of the epic
tradition, Dante's doing
the same thing.
And I just wanted to
alert you that the
snake is very important.
The connection between the human
and the non-human in the
Inferno is that Dante's basic
punitive philosophy is that
humans get punished by being
changed into something that
resembles the crime.
So thieves, because they're
sneaky and they snake their
way into other people's
dwellings and take what
belongs to them, that thieves
are turned into
snakes in the Inferno.
So lots of snakes
in the Inferno.
And one more dramatic
presentation.
All of these are by William
Blake, so we have a really
interesting conjunction of a
nineteenth-century author
going back to Dante and
reproducing these very
emblematic moments.
So we have on record a
nineteenth-century author,
William Blake, being inspired
by the epic tradition.
And I think that Faulkner is a
twentieth-century instance of
a similar kind of inspiration.
But as with Faulkner, he adds
another layer of complexity to
the epic tradition.
And I would say that this is
actually one of the most
important innovations in As I
Lay Dying, in many ways more
interesting than the epic
journey itself, is that humans
are rarely identified with
just one kind of animal.
More often, they are
pulled between
two ends of a spectrum.
They are sometimes identified
with one and sometimes
identified with the other.
And sometimes it's a
mixture of the two.
So the two characters that I
would like to talk about in
that context is first of all
Tull and then Jewel.
Tull is a minor character, but
in many ways he's a really
good example to concentrate on
to try to get a sense of the
basic narrative strategies
in Faulkner.
So I would just like to stop
here for a moment and talk
about possible paper topics when
you think of the upcoming
long paper is to focus
on minor characters.
It is counterintuitive to use
minor characters as the main
subject of your papers, but
actually I promise you,
especially in the case of
Faulkner, you can get
wonderful papers by focusing on
someone like Tull or even
someone like Cora, a very
unobvious entry point.
But because they are unobvious
entry points, you can actually
end up writing really
interesting and surprising and
compelling papers.
So I'll try to give you a
demonstration today of what
could be done by focusing on a
minor character like Tull and
then obviously moving on to a
more central character, Jewel.
So I would like to argue that
Tull is basically identified
with two opposing
kinds of animal.
One is the mule, the
indispensable animal among
poor whites, the mule rather
than the horse, and then a
creature that also makes
a routine appearance in
Faulkner, the buzzard.
So first of all, the mule
and Tull as mule-like.
"When I looked back at my mule,
it was like he was one
of these spy-glasses, and I
could look at him standing
there and see all the broad land
and my house sweated out
of it like it was the more the
sweat, the broader the land.
The more the sweat, the
tighter the house.
Because it would take a tight
house for Cora, to hold Cora
like a jar of milk
in the spring.
You've got to have a
tight jar, or you
need a power spring.
So if you have a big spring,
why then, you have the
incentive to have tight,
well-made jars.
Because it is your milk,
sour or not.
Because you would rather have
milk that will sour than to
have milk that won't, because
you are a man."
I have no idea what he's
talking about.
This is really--
I think maybe it's just the
sound of it that Faulkner
wants us to get the flavor of
thoughts that might have been
coursing through Tull's head.
It's just a wonderful moment
talking about manhood among
poor whites, people who don't
have a lot to prove their
manhood with, no flask, no cars,
no iPhones, nothing.
So very poor equipment with
which to prove your manhood.
And the only thing that Tull
can use is just his mule.
And so he's looking
at his mule.
And by looking at his mule,
somehow his thoughts meander
to the most important person in
his life, his wife, Cora.
And that is his claim to Cora.
So I won't be able to tell you
the exact logic behind this
little bit of reasoning, which
is really more emotional
reasoning than cerebral
reasoning.
But it seems that Tull is saying
that his claim to Cora,
the way that he can keep her,
keep her in a tight house,
both in the physical house but
also in a tight place in his
heart and in her heart, is by
being a very good laborer, by
sweating and cultivating the
land and making sure that the
more the sweat, the
tighter the house.
So this is the logic, that this
is the nature of manhood
among poor whites is that it is
by the sweat of your brow
that you can win the
woman's heart.
It's nothing fancy, nothing
complicated, very simple logic.
But of course, it doesn't
come out in a
simple way in Faulkner.
And that really is the defining
nature of existence
of very poor, rural people is
that basically you only have
one thing to prove yourself.
And we can see that why on this
one thing Anse is such an
inadequate specimen
of masculinity.
He's just not a very
good workman.
So Tull is by contrast someone
who is fully adequate, fully
competent, fully impressive
specimen of manhood in that
particular environment.
And he's very proud.
This is a very joyful moment.
This is one of the great
scenes about marriage.
And on Thursday, we'll talk
about a contrasting scene of a
very bad marriage, contrasting
with this very happy scene of
a married couple in Faulkner.
But as with Faulkner, mules
don't stay happy forever, or
humans that are like mules
don't stay happy forever.
So we are turning to a different
meaning of the mules
when the journey takes both an
epic but also a tragic turn
when they try to cross the river
when the bridge is gone.
And the mules are supposed to
pull the cart across the
river, which they know they
cannot do, so they're just
looking at this impending
disaster.
And once again, the mules as
emblematic of people who know
that something terrible is
going to happen but with
absolutely no power to stop
that from happening.
"The mules stand, their
forequarters already sloped a
little, their rumps high.
They too are breathing now with
a deep groaning sound.
Looking back once, their gaze
sweeps across us, within their
eyes a wild, sad, profound,
and despairing quality, as
though they had already seen in
the thick water the shape
of the disaster which they could
not speak and we could
not see."
So I think the epic convention
is-- in fact, the entire
ancient Greek tradition is
invoked in two ways, both in
the mules as in many ways
emblematic of humans but also
in the function of
a tragic chorus.
We know that this is a
structural feature in Greek
tragedy, a chorus looking on
knowing that a catastrophe is
about to hit but with absolutely
no ability to
prevent its coming.
So that's what the mules
are doing here.
That's the function, that's the
epic function within As I
Lay Dying, very much associated
with a resigned but
resilient attitude that we've
seen in Tull, but in this
case, the resignation and the
personal bravery, that those
two qualities aren't really
adequate to stopping the
arrival of a catastrophe.
So in the next moment, we see
what happens to the mules.
And this is in many ways simply
a logical conclusion of
what they have already
been aware of.
This is a completely
unsurprising ending to this
sequence begun by the mules
as the tragic chorus.
"Between two hills, I see
the mules once more.
They roll up out of the water
in succession, turning
completely over, their legs
stiffly extended, as when they
had lost contact with
the earth."
So this is in many ways a
backward gesture to that
earlier happy moment when the
mules are fully contented and
fully capable of doing what they
can do within their own
environment.
Mules are creatures
with feet of clay.
That's what's clear in this
kind of sequence is that
because they are creatures with
feet of clay, they can
only survive when they
are on solid earth.
And when they're on solid earth,
they are very good in
making that earth productive
and reproductive.
So this is really what Tull
is talking about.
He's a very productive farmer.
He's also reproductively
happy with Cora.
That is the nature but also
the limits of a mule-like
existence is that there's
certain lines that mules
cannot cross.
They cannot transcend
their own condition.
As creatures with feet of clay,
they can only be OK--
and it really is no more than
that-- they can be OK only
within one setting.
And in this other moment, when
they left the customary
setting and they are stuck
trying to negotiate with a
swollen river, we know that the
mules will not survive in
that kind of transformed
setting.
So in many ways, a perfect
analogy for the poor whites,
that they can do relatively
well when they're left to
their own devices, when they're
allowed simply to
stick to their environment.
But once they're taken out of
their environment, then we
know that terrible things are
going to happen to them.
So in this particular
sequence, Tull being
associated with the mules, he's
basically defenseless.
He wants just to be allowed
to live life
according to his own fashion.
That really is the basic
requirement of the mules is to
be let alone and to be allowed
just to survive as
they know how to do.
That is a very innocuous and
in many ways a very sad
portrait of the poor whites
but basically innocuous.
But Faulkner really also has a
somewhat different image of
what the poor white community
might amount to.
And so he's not just going to
give us an image of poor
whites as defenseless but
basically non-aggressive.
Mules are completely
non-aggressive.
Faulkner does think that there
actually is an element of
aggression in a very close-knit
community,
especially a close-knit
community such as the poor
white community.
And we see that in the next
image of the poor whites
coming not surprisingly
from Jewel.
This is how Jewel thinks
about his neighbors.
"And now them others, sitting
there, like buzzards.
Waiting, fanning themselves,
every bastard in the country
coming in to stare at her."
We've talked about hatred as a
very important emotion, as a
kind of emotional bond
within the family.
And we now see that hatred
is also a very important
emotional bond within a small,
isolated community.
Not only does Jewel hate someone
like Tull, because
they're always sitting there
watching your every move, not
only does Jewel hate Tull, but
he also imagines that there is
an element of aggression,
something that is not quite
benign coming from
the neighbors.
And that is really why he's so
suspicious of them and so
ill-disposed towards
them on his part.
And the buzzards actually will
appear over and over again.
We've already seen them in The
Sound and the Fury, the
buzzards collecting around the
body of the dog, Nancy, in the
ditch and buzzards that Benjy
imagines would go and undress
his dead grandmother.
So buzzards have already
appeared in Faulkner.
But in As I Lay Dying, buzzards
as a physical
presence will be quite
important.
And also as a metaphoric
presence to talk about what
your neighbors might really
be like in their hearts--
not in their outward behavior,
but in their hearts, they
might be just like buzzards.
And here's an image of buzzards
to explain why Jewel
might think that the neighbors
are like them.
So Tull, as I said, is obviously
not the main
protagonist in As I Lay Dying.
But he is an important clue to
what Faulkner is trying to do.
Because the way Faulkner
portrays Jewel, a very
important character, is almost
exactly analogous to the way
he portrays Tull, except that
what in Tull is dispersed and
sequenced--
Tull is sometimes identified
with the mule and sometimes
identified with the buzzard.
We don't actually see him
being simultaneously
identified with both.
What is sequenced and spaced out
in Tull would quite often
be collapsed together
as one in Faulkner's
portrayal of Jewel.
So in this moment, we actually
see Jewel being likened to two
animals, not just one, not
just his horse, which is
obviously the main creature that
he's affiliated with, not
just the horse, but
something else.
"'Come here, sir,' Jewel says.
He moves.
Moving that quick, his coat,
bunching, tongue swirling like
so many flames.
With tossing mane and tall and
rolling eye, the horse makes
another short curvetting rush
and stops again, feet bunched,
watching Jewel.
Jewel walks steadily toward him,
his hands at his sides.
Save for Jewel's legs, they are
like figures carved for a
tableau savage in the sun.
"When Jewel can almost touch
him, the horse stands on its
hind legs and slashes
maze of hooves as by
an illusion of wings.
Among them, beneath the upreared
chest, he moves with
the flashing limberness
of a snake.
For an instant, before the jerk
comes into his arms, he
sees his whole body, earth-free,
horizontal,
whipping snake-limber, until he
finds the horse's nostrils
and touches earth again."
So many things to say
about this moment.
The first--
and we've referenced back to
the mules and the fact that
they are creatures of clay--
is that Faulkner is basically
making a very deep, metaphoric
distinction between two
kinds of animals.
There are animals like the
mules, who can't swim and can
only survive when they are on
solid earth, and then there
are other creatures, the horse
being the main example, who
actually can leave the earth
for a nontrivial length of
time and be able to survive
when they're not
touching the earth.
So right here, we know that
Jewel is a very different kind
of person from Tull.
Yes, he is in a poor
white community.
His parents appear to
be poor whites.
But for some reason, there is
something else about Jewel
that makes him different.
He's more horse-like
than mule-like.
So this is a backward reference
to another important
animal in As I Lay Dying.
But within the compass of this
particular passage, what is
really interesting is the
simultaneous co-presence of
the horse and the snake.
And for most of us, the two of
them actually really are not
that alike.
It's hard to think of any kind
of kinship, really, between
the horse and the snake.
They look different, and they
have very different
connotations in our common
understanding
of those two animals.
So let's try to see what it is
that enables Faulkner to bring
those two animals together.
Well, we know that the horse is
a winged horse, so this is
going back to the
epic tradition.
It's an illusion of wings.
This is not just a horse that
is an earthly creature, but
seemingly one of the winged
horses of Greek mythology.
And certainly the horse is
acting like a mythic horse, in
that the motion is almost
beyond just the physical
capability of any earthly
creature.
So it is the body in motion,
but not being registered as
body at all, but simply as
bodily parts coming into view,
when suddenly you are seeing
that bodily part, but not
really the entire horse.
And that actually was the way
that Vardaman was thinking of
the horse as well.
We'll go back to that moment.
In Vardaman's representation of
the horse in the barn, "It
was as though the dark were
resolving him out of his
integrity into an unrelated
scattering of components--
snuffings and stampings, smells
of cooling flesh and
ammoniac hair," and so on.
So Vardaman has exactly the
same kind of scattered
representation.
The horse is moving so fast that
we're not actually seeing
the horse as a single,
integrated being, but simply
as different bodily
parts coming into
view through the motion.
So really it's less about the
body, less about the horse's
body, than about a
very fast, almost
transcendent kind of motion.
And that is really how Jewel's
horse is represented to us.
We don't see him as a horse.
We simply see him as something
that is in constant motion.
But more than that, it is the
very ambiguous relation
between Jewel and the horse.
Obviously, Jewel loves
his horse.
He's done a lot of work
to get the horse.
It is very much his horse.
But it is not exactly an
affectionate relation.
It is a battle between two
creatures very important to
each other.
The horse probably is the most
important creature to Jewel,
but there's no affection
there.
So what is the feeling?
What is the emotional bond
between these two things if it
is not common affection, which
is the most ordinary and
easily recognizable and
recognized human bond?
It's not there.
What is this other emotion
that is there?
And it seems that what Faulkner
is suggesting is that
instead of the common human
affection, it is a snake-like
quality that is binding
Jewel to his horse.
We don't know what emotions
snakes have. They're not
credited with having emotions,
other than sneakiness, which
isn't really an emotion.
So we don't actually know what
kind of emotional bonds can
come from snakes, aggression
or maybe some degree of
hatred, but that is
a general thing.
It's not a benign feeling,
that's for sure.
So right now, let's just say
that we don't completely
understand what is going on
here or why the snake is a
very important supplement
to the relation between
Jewel and the horse.
We're back, once again, to what
we've been talking about
earlier, which is the
narrative as a
secret-bearing narrative.
This is not social dialect.
This is words with secrets.
That's what we're seeing
right here.
And just to highlight how
unusual this description of
Jewel and the horse is, I just
want to go back very briefly
to a contrasting moment in
Hemingway, when once again we
see a human paired with an
animal that is very important
to him in In Our Time.
This is the matador
killing the bull.
"When he started to kill it, it
was all in the same rush.
The bull looking at him straight
in front, hating.
The bull charged and Villalta
charged and just for a moment
they became one.
Villalta became one with the
bull and then it was over."
In this passage in Hemingway,
actually, the emotion of
hatred is quite important
as well.
So in an odd way, just like
Faulkner, Hemingway is also
interested in hatred as a
powerful emotional bond.
And that really is
what enables the
bullfight to go on.
But it is hatred so clear and
so transparent and so
ritualistic and so ceremonious
that it is also transformed by
that ritual into a kind
of love, really.
So in Hemingway, it is
very, very clear.
It's the clarity of the
sentiment that is in the
foreground.
There's really nothing
more to say.
The bull and the matador
have become one.
Hemingway keeps repeating
that.
Everything is completely clear,
and there is no secret
whatsoever.
By contrast, this is a secretive
narrative that
flaunts its secret
in our face.
We don't really understand
what's going on.
And that is the purpose of
this kind of narration --
so just to refresh your
memory, we're drawing
inspiration from
Frank Kermode's
classic, Genesis of Secrecy.
And the moment when Faulkner is
highlighting, dramatizing
the existence of a secret is
by way of Jewel's horse.
And this time it is a fully
dramatized moment, in the
sense that not only is the horse
there and not only is
Jewel there, but everyone
else is there.
So there's the entire
tragic chorus--
or maybe in this case not
completely tragic either--
but the entire chorus
is there witnessing
this dramatic exchange.
And it is no longer an exchange
between Jewel and the
horse, but someone else.
"'Jewel,' ma said,
looking at him.
'I'll give--
I'll give--
give.' Then she began to cry.
She cried hard, not hiding her
face, standing there in her
faded wrapper, looking at him
and him on the horse looking
down at her, his face growing
cold and a little sick-looking
until he looked away quick, and
Cash came and touched her.
'You go on to the house,'
Cash said.
'This here ground is
too wet for you.
You go on, now.'
"That night, I found ma sitting
beside the bed where
he was sleeping in the dark.
She cried hard, maybe because
she had to cry so quiet, maybe
because she felt the same way
about tears as she did about
deceit, hating herself for doing
it, hating him because
she had to.
And then I knew that I knew.
I knew that as plain as on the
day I knew about Dewey Dell."
So this is the moment when
the secret is exposed.
And it is exposed of course
without Faulkner ever coming
close to the very simple
nature of that secret.
It is completely by
way of this detour
around Jewel's horse.
The way we know that there is
a secret is that Addie's
response to the horse is nothing
like what would have
been a normal response
to a horse.
Her son disappears night
after night.
People don't know
where he goes.
And then all of a sudden, he
comes back with this horse, an
unheard of possession
among poor whites.
Mules would be the standard
animals to
have for poor whites.
A horse is not at all the thing
to have or that anyone
could have. So this is
a possession that is
inappropriate for poor whites.
And Vardaman's response is
what would've been an
ordinary, completely
understandable response is,
let me ride the horse.
So Vardaman is reacting
as anyone would react.
Addie's response is by crying,
which I guess could still have
been normal, except that the
response then from Jewel is
that his face is growing cold.
And then he's looking at her,
and the more he looks at her,
the more sick-looking
he becomes.
So that is not in the
script at all.
If the horse had been anything
but a good event, if the horse
had simply been a joyous
acquisition, none of this
would have happened.
So what is it that transforms
a joyous acquisition into
something that people can either
cry about or be very
uneasy about or something that
requires some degree of
comforting, which is what
Cash seems to be doing?
Here is this proud mother.
And Addie ought to be
a proud mother.
And instead, Cash is talking
to her as if something
terrible had happened to her.
"Go on back to the house.
Go on, now.
The ground is too wet for you."
The solicitude coming
from Cash is also
inexplicable.
So we can say that from
every single person--
the overreaction of Addie, the
crying, the sick-looking
expression on Jewel's face,
the over-solicitude coming
from Cash--
all of those things are things
that should not be in the
script but surprisingly
are in the script.
And then we know that there
really is something that could
be named, that could be
identified and named.
And even though Darl is not
going to name it for us, he
comes as close as he can
to saying that word.
So the way he tells us is that,
"I knew that as plain on
that day as I knew about Dewey
Dell." So right here, we see a
backward reproduction in
terms of Faulkner's
characterization.
We know about Dewey Dell's
pregnancy out of wedlock
first, and this is the thing
that Darl knows about, this
transparent secret.
It is Dewey Dell's
out-of-wedlock pregnancy that
is being reproduced
in her mother.
This is the interesting backward
reproduction, like
mother, like daughter.
And in this case, we know about
the daughter's condition
first. And it's because Darl has
exactly the same reaction
now and exactly the same degree
of knowledge now that
we know that in fact what Dewey
Dell is doing now has
been done once before in the
family by her mother.
So a lot of things are hanging
together, the fact that Jewel
has a very different height,
that can't be explained.
The fact that Jewel can acquire
a horse when nobody
else in a poor white community,
that can't be
explained as well.
A lot of things are falling into
place with a suspicion
that's just sneaking up on us.
And I think that this is really
why the snake is so
important to Faulkner is
that a discovery is
sneaking up on us.
It is sneaking up on
everyone else.
This is a snake that is not
like the snake in Dante, a
snake that takes the possession
of someone else--
although there's an element of
this as well-- but a snake
that insinuates itself into our
consciousness and imparts
to us a degree of knowledge or a
kind of knowledge that maybe
we would prefer not to have.
So this is really the very
early snake, the snake that is
the bearer of knowledge coming
to Adam and Eve that is
being invoked here.
And just to clinch the case,
just to make everything very,
very clear, Faulkner now resorts
to another convention,
bringing Addie back to
life so that she
actually gets to say something.
And there is no other
explanation other than the
poetic license afforded by the
epic form that would allow for
a completely non-realistic
representation of the voice of
a dead person in an otherwise
realistic novel.
But that is the poetic license
that Faulkner is taking.
So in a very, very strange
moment, basically at the very
heart of As I Lay Dying, we
see the voice of Addie
addressing us and talking
about a past
moment in her life.
"I would think of sin as I would
think of the clothes we
both wore in the world's face,
of the circumspection
necessary, because he was he and
I was I. The sin the more
utter and terrible since he was
the instrument ordained by
God who created the
sin to sanctify
that sin he had created.
While I waited for him in the
woods, waiting for him because
he saw me before he saw me,
I would think of him
as dressed in sin.
He the more beautiful, since
the garment which he had
exchanged for sin
was sanctified."
It's a confession, I guess, as
close to a confession as we
can get about the paternity
of Jewel.
But that confession about the
paternity of Jewel is
characteristically couched in
terms of a strange kind of
satisfaction that Addie gets
from this particular kind of
affair, which is that the
garment that her partner in
sin has exchanged for that sin
is actually all the more
beautiful because it is
sanctified by God.
So that tells us who
the father is.
And Faulkner is being
tongue-in-cheek here.
The father, we figure out,
is probably Whitfield.
He's the only likely
candidate.
There's really no one else in
that small community who could
be the father.
So there could only be one.
But it turns out that Faulkner
actually has taken his name
from a historic figure, a very
influential preacher,
eighteenth-century preacher.
Benjamin Franklin said that
when he would go to hear
Whitfield, he would make sure
that he would have very little
money on his person, because
he just knew that he would
empty out his pockets when
Whitfield goes around and asks
for donations.
And sure enough, even though
he takes very little money
with him, he always walks away
with empty pockets after
Whitfield is done.
So that's a very powerful, one
of the most famous preachers
of the 18th century.
And Faulkner has recreated
this preacher, but with a
twist, in As I Lay Dying.
This is his Whitfield.
"It was His hand that bore me
safely above the flood, that
fended me from the dangers
of the waters.
My horse was frightened, and my
own heart failed me as the
logs and the uprooted trees bore
down upon my littleness.
But not my soul.
I knew then that forgiveness
was mine.
The flood, the danger, behind,
and as I rode on across the
firm earth--"
So the Bundrens aren't able to
cross the swollen river.
The mules drown in the river.
One person is able to cross the
river, because his horse
is able to cross the river.
So this is the genealogy of the
horse, both as a horse but
obviously also a
snake as well.
The full spectrum of meanings
of the creature snake are
revealed to us in pieces.
And that's really the nature
of the narrative, that we
don't actually get the whole
creature all at once.
We see different bodily parts
come into view with the motion
of this creature.
And with this established,
finally established kinship
between Jewel's horse and
Whitfield's horse, in this
case, a very well-behaved horse,
not at all like the
wild horse of Jewel, which also
explains why Whitfield is
a minister, whereas Jewel
is nothing like that.
So it's the wildness in the
offspring that actually
backward reproduces the mostly
law-abiding but not completely
law-abiding identity
of the father.
And just to add to that, here is
Darl observing everything.
And this is the clearest
indication that the animal for
Whitfield is also the horse.
"On the horse he rode up to
Armstid's and came back on the
horse."
It's almost too heavy-handed to
emphasize this detail over
and over again, and it would
have been completely uncalled
for, except for the fact that
we really need to have a
narrative genealogy for Jewel.
And it is a narrative genealogy
that is told
actually not only through a
human story, not only through
the monologue of Addie in this
epic convention of the dead
speaking, but is also told a
parallel epic convention of a
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00:48:28,600 --> 00:00:00,000
human story threaded through
a non-human creature.
