Week 6 - My late Thanksgiving Dysfunctional Familytacular - As I Lay Dying

Pulling up Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness" on youtube. Ah, yep feels good, now let's begin. This time with an exciting Lit Analysis focusing on symbols, irony, and prose. As this may be my second to the last blog, it needs to be excellent. This will be the Game of Thrones Episode 9 of blogs -- the penultimate. I need to show that this is what the blog has been leading up to, preparing me for. To show that I've learned something, made progress, that I'm not just coasting along, is my intended goal here. This will be an in-depth analysis of a book, similar to the ending essays in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Don't worry though, I'll still be following the typical blog tone so it won't be as dry.

So, I've planned out this penultimate book analysis way back when making the Shark Tank Presentation with the classic William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. It was for numerous reasons. William Faulkner is revered by many literary enthusiasts for his exemplary prose and symbolism which is perfect for my penultimate lit analysis. As I Lay Dying is Faulkner's self-described magnum opus, so out of the books he wrote, I selected this one as he must've used all his tools in his literary toolbox to be so proud of it. I was correct, however, it just took me a couple more hours than preferred to figure them out.



I originally thought the week 6 blog would be released around Thanksgiving and I thought this book would be great for my Thanksgiving Dysfunctional Familytacular. What a shame, though. I guess the book's still relevant, maybe not as timely, however. The book follows the Bundren's family trek across the Missipian countryside to bury their wife and mother Addie, going through all of their perspectives on the journey. Of course, it isn't as simple with the Bundren family. They're a stubborn, manly (I'll get into what I mean by that later) bunch who accepts no charity until forced to accept it. Along the way, there will be many symbols and events that will illustrate their problematic family dynamics. So, I got my How to Read Literature like a Professor and my scribbles that vaguely look like notes on As I Lay Dying, so let's begin with some of those symbols.



Tools in the novel are significant in how they represent their family. Cash Bundren tries to mend the family together with his tools. He makes the coffin for his mother who is on her deathbed. He is aiming for unrealistic perfection in his coffin, trying to show his love to his unappreciative mother and make his family rejoice upon something. Actually, according to How to Read Literature like a Professor, this would probably be one of their claimed Christ figures. Personally, I always feel like these Christ figures are forced or just rely on pure speculation, but, for once, I'll digress. With the list given in the book, he does meet four of the criteria given.

• Employed as a carpenter. Check, a year before he was installing a roof on a church and actually fell off, so that actually adds to it.
• In agony. Check, when he broke his leg after their mule wagon failed at fording a river, Anse Bundren, his dad, poured concrete on it as some sort of cast. This only worsened it, and at the book end's, a doctor chipping off the concrete, states that he'll probably never be able to use his leg again because of how his dad treated it.
• Self-sacrificing. Check, after their wagon crashed and he has a broken leg, Cash remains stoic. Essentially, he says, don't worry about my broken leg, keep on going. To continue their quest, he sacrifices his long-held dream in life, a gramophone. He gives his funds to Anse so they could purchase some new mules.
• Came to redeem an unworthy world. Check, this is where the tools come in. The tools represent him making efforts to fix and correct his broken family.

Even when I do this Christ figure thing with evidence to support it, it still feels flimsy, but I believe Faulkner did intend to portray Cash as a Christ figure to elucidate a point. My experience coming from the Is He Serious and Other Ironies chapter of How to Read Literature Like A Professor, i.e., irony trumps everything. The Christ figure that he's portrayed as valiantly sacrifices a leg, but for what? To bury his mother? They could've paused at a town to address his leg with someone who actually has experience, instead, he says continue, don't worry about my leg. So while typically a Christ figure commits a sacrifice for the greater good, here there's no reason to it. With that irony, Faulkner basically attacks manliness and heroism in situations where it is pointless. At first Cash's martyrdom seems noble, but after he tolerates it just fine when finding out that his leg is destroyed, it becomes ridiculous.



Remember the first chapter of How to Read Literature like a Professor? (Let's start calling it Lit. like Prof. to save space, by the way.) It was on the whole idea behind quests being a way of development for the characters involved. Here with the quest in As I Lay Dying, the quest to bury their mother and wife is used ironically. At the end of it they are successful in their mission, but even though there were defining moments where the Bundren family could have developed, they instead resided and remained in their old ways.

At the end of the novel, (I don't think anyone is reading this or has any future plans at the moment to read it, so I'm fine with spoiling it) it turns out this whole trek wasn't about burying Anse's wife Addie, instead, it was about Anse getting a new pair of teeth from the orthodontist in the town where the cemetery was located. In the end, ironically the quest proves to be more destructive than helpful to the family. One son now has lost a leg. Another is now in a mental hospital for his actions. Admittedly, I don't understand everything, that's why I leave some things vague. The daughter/ sister of the family finds herself increasingly more distrustful of men and increasingly desperate to end her pregnancy. Another son has lost his cherished horse that he worked months to attain, sold by his dad. Overall, the only one who profited from this quest, although his character remains the same, was Anse who at the end of it got rid of his deceased wife, a new pair of teeth, and, with barely two seconds with Addie being in the grave, a new wife. The ending quote involves him addressing his family, "'It's Cash and Jewel and Vardaman and Dewey Dell,' pa says, kind of hangdog and proud too, with his teeth and all, even if he wouldn't look at us, "Meet Mrs. Bundren," he says. Ooh, commentary on woman's roles two weeks in a row. With this ending, Faulkner basically mocks how women are perceived in society as being replaceable, simply fulfilling basic roles and not much else. Or at least that's how I interpreted it, I could easily be wrong there.

Let's discuss the hardest aspect of reading As I Lay Dying. The way it was written, woof it's hard. Like I mentioned above, I didn't fully understand everything that was going on. In the book, Darl, one of the sons, gets so frustrated with his family that he attempts to incinerate his mother's coffin. I figured that out 50 pages after the event took place. When Cash talked about him being sent to a mental asylum, I was blindsided. When did this happen, I asked. You see this book employs stream of consciousness which some of you may be familiar with, but I don't think we have ever covered explicitly in any class, so I'll cover it now. Stream of consciousness goes into different people minds, following their flow of thoughts as events take place. Imagine it being basically all your thoughts written down with the general cohesion those thoughts may have. Here, stream of consciousness is invaluable to your reading experience in As I Lay Dying. Instead of an objective narration on the subject, it puts you into the mind of the character and gives you a much better idea of the character, their perspective, and their beliefs.

Should I try stream of consciousness blogging for my next genius hour? I'll basically just write on whatever for a couple hours.

Here's an example of what I mean, this is in the perspective of Anse: "I have done no wrong to be cussed by. I am not religious, I reckon. But peace is my heart: I know it is. I have done things but neither better nor worse than them that pretend otherlike, and I know that Old Marster will care for me as for ere a sparrow that falls." Stream of consciousness is great at creating empathy and sympathy with our characters, but its inherent flaw is that when that same voice is used to describe an event that is going on, at times I found it incomprehensible to decipher what was going on. This was my main struggle with doing an analysis of As I Lay Dying, that type of writing, in any book really, proves to be so obstinate that I was completely lost.

Well, that was my Penultimate Lit Analysis. As I Lay Dying was a unique experience for me with its writing style, and with the angle of analyzing, it certainly was a challenge. This blog isn't my longest, but man, it sure takes a while to write about symbols and all that jazz. I've probably spent more time on this one than others that I've written. With most of my time spent skimming through the book trying to spark ideas. Of course, there's still a lot more symbols I didn't even touch, I didn't even talk about the fact that it was set in the south, for one. I had to be realistic with myself though with who my audience was. I doubt many, if any, of you, have read the book, and a lot of you considered Lit. like Prof. to be rather dry, and I can't crack many jokes with the focus of literary analysis. Oh well, I'm saving them up for the next one. Was it penultimate? Meh, I wish Brandon would get off the computer earlier so I could've started it earlier for one. I'll leave that up for you to decide.

Short, concise MetaBlog:
I need some sleep. I technically finished this blog on Friday, actually. No one's probably going to notice my blog missing at 12:20 a.m., so it is not too much of a concern. Literary analysis is hard guys.