Tull (Pg. 85)
1. What is ironic about Addie’s funeral attire? She is wearing her wedding
dress. Typically, a wedding dress would signify the beginning of a life together and
be a symbol of hope and possibility, but her wearing it in death could signify that
her marriage to Anse was, in many ways, the beginning of her death. In Addie’s
passage, her ideas about life will shed more light on this question.
2.
When Whitfield enters, does he focus matters on God, or on himself? How do
you know? Whitfield enters the house with a blessing, but then explains why he
was late. It may even be that he is showering glory upon himself when he mentions
the fact that he had to swim his horse across the river. He claims the Lord’s
protection, but seems to be emphasizing his own importance here. 3.
What is the function of the italicized passage on pages 90-91? On page 92?
These seem to be the thought that accompany Tull’s spoken words: “You couldn’t
have holp it,” which may be referring to Cash’s fall from a church roof, and may be
referring to Cash’s frustration about the coffin. These may just be the thoughts of
Tull, or of Cash, or of several of the men, as they sit outside and hear the women
singing inside at Addie’s funeral. The passage clearly seems to be he thoughts of
Tull. 4.
Where has Vardaman been during the service? Vernon and his wife pass
Vardaman on their way home, and he is fishing in a slough—ironically, one where
there has never been a fish known to swim, at least according to Vernon. Earlier in
the passage, the reader learns that Vardaman had reacted violently when Cora
cooked the fish that he thought was his mother, and now he is looking for another
fish. Rather than talking to Vardaman or holding him, interestingly, Dewey Dell
sends him to this slough to fish, telling him that there was one there. Vernon offers
to take Vardaman fishing with him, but Vardaman wants to stay in the barren
slough—a rejection parallel to Anse’s refusal of Vernon’s team; this is a family that
would rather wallow in its own inability than accept help from others, until the help
is too late.
Darl (Pg. 94) 1. Darl says, “I cannot love my mother because I have no mother. Jewel’s mother is
a horse.” Explain the significance of this. Darl’s response to Addie’s death is to
suppress emotions—since Addie is no longer alive, she is no longer worthy of
emotional response. Jewel’s first love, apparently, is his horse. Since this is his first
priority, Darl angrily says that his mother must be his horse, because his horse is
the one he loves the most.
Cash (Pg. 96)
1. What is the argument here about? Jewel and Cash are arguing about loading the
coffin onto the wagon. Clearly, there is some step that must be taken before the
coffin will ride in balance. Jewel’s typical first inclination is to rush into the job
and get it done, with or without preparation. The interesting thing about this
passage is that the reader (and Jewel) never learns what must be done to balance
the coffin, which may or may not be a factor in the wagon’s destruction in the river.
Darl (Pg. 97)
1. Explain the significance of Jewel’s physical appearance. The blood in his face
seems to be going “in waves;” he is obviously agitated at the task of moving the
coffin. His skin is the “smooth, thick, pale green of cow’s cud.” His physical
appearance mirrors the unnatural condition of his emotions—his anger will allow
him no other action but the first and quickest, and so he ends up bearing the burden
of the coffin alone, in his rush to simply throw her onto the wagon.
Vardaman (Pg. 100)
1.
What does Vardaman want that is in town? He wants a train set that is in
the toy store window. 2.
Explain the odd conversation between Darl and Vardaman as they are getting
ready to go in the wagon. While Anse is insisting on family unity in such odd ways
as refusing Jewel the permission to ride his horse, and berating Cash for wanting to
carry his tools so he can start Vernon’s barn roof on the way back from Jefferson,
the true condition of the family appears in this conversation. Jewel’s mother is a
horse; his first priority is not even a person. Vardaman and Darl are having such a
hard time dealing with their mother’s death that this passage is only funny in the
darkest way—their emotional nourishment has been so scant that they are left to
their own sad ways to cope. Darl (Pg. 103)
1. When Darl looks at Dewey Dell, who does he see in her eyes? What is the
significance of this? Darl sees Peabody’s back; since he knows that Dewey Dell is
pregnant, and that Peabody could provide an abortion, he knows that Dewey Dell is
recalling her last memory of Peabody, walking toward his team and back to
Jefferson, Dewey Dell’s opportunity lost.
Anse (Pg. 105)
1. Why does Jewel not leave with the rest of the family? What happens in this
passage? Anse forbade Jewel to ride his own horse along with them; he wanted
Jewel to ride in the wagon with everyone else, and so Jewel refuses and stays home.
Jewel waits and sets out on his horse, and, when the horse is in sight, Darl starts
laughing. Anse misinterprets the laughter as a part of Darl’s insanity, and then sees
it as disrespect. Tellingly, he says, “I done my best—here, referring to his desire to
bury Addie in Jefferson, but also representing his self-pitying perspective on his life
as a whole.
Darl (Pg. 107)
1. Describe and explain the significance of the New Hope church sign. It has faded
lettering that makes a “fading and tranquil assertion”—even yielding a “fading
capitulation” to the Bundrens as they ride by. The meaning of this is clear—the
message of the Christian faith is a calming one, but not one of eternal significance
or power. The cynical ways of Whitfield will strengthen the reader’s impression that
Faulkner has little use for organized religion and its ministrants.
Anse (Pg. 110)
1.
What is ironic about Anse’s monologue about society? He says that the only
people who can make a profit are “them that runs the stores in the towns, doing no
sweating, living off of them that sweats.” Anse is a farmer who does not sweat but
instead lives off his neighbors, who do sweat to help him year after year. In other
words, he is even worse than the shopkeepers he mentions because he does no work
at all. 2.
What is Anse’s source of comfort as he tries to get to Jefferson? He will be
able to buy his false teeth, which “will be a comfort.” Samson (Pg. 112) 1.
What observation does Samson make about Anse? How accurate is he?
Samson notices that Anse “would set there on the wagon, hunched up, blinking,
listening to us tell about how quick the bridge went and how high the water was,
and...[would] act like he was proud of it, like he had made the river rise himself.”
Anse enjoys being pitied; in front of these men, he becomes very proud of himself
and his “misfortune.” 2.
What does Samson say is a key difference between men and women? His
wife Rachel is “outrage[d]” by the fact that the Bundrens are sleeping in the barn,
with a dead body that has been decomposing for four days. Samson thinks that
women “make life hard on them[selves], not taking it as it comes up, like a man
does.” In other words, he thinks that women are too emotional to handle situations
as they happen. It may be this opinion, and its effects, that also leads to Rachel’s
frustration, though. Dewey Dell (Pg. 120) 1. What sentence perhaps best sums up Dewey Dell’s mental and emotional state?
Answers may vary. Examples: • “It is because in the wild and outraged earth too
soon too soon too soon.”
• “It’s not that I wouldn’t and will not it’s that it’s too
soon too soon too soon.” • “I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.”
2.
Explain the significance of the paragraph beginning “The land runs out of
Darl’s eyes.” Several ideas are expressed here. It is clear that Darl and Dewey
Dell have a special sort of connection to one another, beyond the typical brothersister bond. Dewey Dell’s naked rising above the “travail” has to do with her
desire to escape her current troubles (her pregnancy as well as the burial situation
with Addie). The black void and Vardaman’s counterintuitive butchering of the fish
may suggest the nonsensical life that Dewey Dell feels she leads—the last thing
Vardaman would have done would be to kill the fish that he thought contained his
mother’s life force. By killing Darl, it is uncertain what would be accomplished;
given Darl’s ending, it may be a desire to end his life mercifully.
3.
What is the function of the syntax in the last paragraph, where Dewey Dell
mentions belief in God? Answers may vary. Example: The meaning is ambiguous,
depending on the emphasis placed in the sentences. If the “God” is emphasized
ironically where it is a noun of direct address, it may be a sign of desperation, or a
cynical emphasis. If it is emphasized differently, it may be sincere, or an expression
of grief. Tull (Pg. 123) 1.
According to Vernon, what is the most unnerving part of Darl’s personality?
Vernon says that it is not “what he done so much or said or anything so much as
how he looks at you. It’s like he had got into the inside of you, someway. Like
somehow you was looking at yourself and your doings outen his eyes.” Darl can
perceive affective elements in a situation that the others cannot—that much is clear
from his narration of his mother’s death and from his own conversations with
Jewel. 2.
Do you think it is Anse’s promise to Addie that makes him go to Jefferson
despite the flood? Why or why not? Answers may vary. Example: The promise is
a strong pull on Anse, especially since Dewey Dell keeps reminding him of it. The
possibility of new dentures in Jefferson may be as equally as strong an unspoken
incentive. 3.
What details about Jewel show his inner ambivalence and rage? Vernon
notices that, in his anger, Jewel turns from green to red to green again. The
changing colors show inner turmoil; the outer verbal expression of this is his rage
toward those who only want to help him. Darl (Pg. 128)
1.
When Jewel is sneaking out late at night and sleeping during the days, Addie
either does his chores or gets one of the other children to do them for him, and hides
that from Anse. Why is this ironic? Jewel is the child that Addie has with Rev.
Whitfield. The passage tells us here that Addie tried to teach her children that
“deceit was such that, in a world where it was, nothing else could be very bad or
very important, not even poverty.” Her very conception of Jewel, and her
concealment of Jewel’s release from chores, go against one of the core principles
she wanted to teach her children. 2.
What do Cash and Darl think that Jewel is doing out late at night? Are they
right? They think Jewel is out “rutting”, or engaging in sex late at night. It turns
out that Jewel has been working for Mr. Quick at night, to earn a horse. It appears
that Addie is too proud of him for words; Anse, on the other hand, berates his son
for taking work away from the family. Tull (Pg. 137) 1. Vardaman gives Vernon the confidence to go back over the bridge to his mule.
What is the significance of this passage? Vernon says that “a fellow can see ever
now and then that children have more sense than him. But he dont like to admit it to
them until they have beards. After they have a beard, they are too busy because they
dont know if they’ll ever quite make it back to where they were in sense before they
was haired...” In other words, adulthood can actually lessen confidence, because
adults tend to look more toward the consequences of an action than the action itself,
and so they lose out on many opportunities.
Darl (Pg. 141)
1.
What images are used to foreshadow the wagon’s destruction? When Darl
looks across the river, he can see Anse, Vernon, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell
waiting for them to bring the wagon. Darl says that they are “the only things in
sight not of that single monotony of desolation leaning with that terrific quality a
little from right to left, as though we had reached the place where the motion of the
wasted world accelerates just before the final precipice.” Darl is in a wagon being
pulled by a current; this explains why his view seems to lean. The reference to a
“final precipice” suggests ultimate destruction is coming, but only to those in the
wagon—and so disaster is imminent for Darl and Cash. Darl continues: “Yet they
appear dwarfed. It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable
quality.” Darl compares the distance to the other side of the river to a period of
time; the impossibility of time travel is used to describe the seeming impossibility of
crossing that river with the wagon and Addie’s body. As the passage continues,
even the mules look back with hesitation; their breathing takes on a “deep groaning
sound”; their eyes contain 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.” Even the mules, then, portend the destruction of
the wagon. 2.
Compare and contrast the final two images of the passage: Jewel beating his
horse, and the final appearance of the mules out of the water. Answers may vary.
One similarity lies in the implied futility of both images. Jewel is “hammering [the
horse’s] head with his fist,” and yet the horse does not follow Jewel’s commands.
The mules “roll up out of the water in succession, turning completely over, their
legs stiffly extended....” The similarity lies in the fact that neither creature was able
to fulfill its purpose; the only difference is that Jewel’s horse has not stopped
fighting its destruction. Vardaman (Pg. 150) 1. What is unusual about the syntax of this passage? What is the purpose? As with
other passages in this novel, the reader receives Vardaman’s stream of
consciousness—in other words, his unedited flow of thoughts during the destruction
of the wagon. Answers may vary as to the purpose, but it is important to stress that
a function of stream-of-consciousness writing is to convey the emotional tempo of a
situation, and the effects of a situation on a particular character, in ways that
standard narration cannot.
2. What is the function of the italicized portion of this passage? The paragraphs
immediately before and after the italicized portion express Vardaman’s wishes for
the situation—what he hopes will happen. The italicized portion tells the reader
what actually happens.
Tull (Pg. 152)
1.
How does Cora interpret the log’s destruction of the wagon? What is Vernon’s
response to Cora? Cora sees the log as “the hand of God.” Vernon finds it
contradictory that she says that the crossing of the river was “foolish,” because
“[n]obody cant guard against the hand of God. It would be sacrilege to try to.” She
blames Anse for not being on the wagon when it was wrecked, even though she
thought it was foolish to try. 2.
In her conversations with Vernon, when does Cora seem to lean most heavily
on religion? She lapses into hymn-singing and religious references when Vernon
seems to have her in a logical corner. When Vernon says, “One breath you say they
was daring the hand of God to try it, and the next breath you jump on Anse because
he wasn’t with them,” her only answer is to sing hymns, “with that singing look in
her face like she had done give up folks and all their foolishness and had done went
on ahead of them, marching up the sky, singing.” This continues Faulkner’s
suggestion that the Christian faith has little to do with common sense and reality
and much more to do with a refuge from inner turmoil. Darl (Pg. 156)
1.
When Anse, Jewel, Darl, Vernon and Cash are looking for Cash’s tools, Anse
says, “Was there ere a such misfortunate man.” To whom is he referring? Anse is
pitying himself, rather than Cash, who has been kicked repeatedly by a horse,
almost drowned, and who has lost many of his expensive tools. 2.
Describe Anse’s actions during the hunt for Cash’s tools. While Vernon,
Jewel, Darl, and Cash are in the river, Anse is on the bank watching them work.
Occasionally, he will go back down to look at the mules’ dead bodies, and he is
eventually described as “hunched, mournful, like a failing steer or an old tall bird.”
When one considers that a steer is not able to procreate, one can see how Anse’s
laziness has robbed him of the ability to be a man. 3.
Explain the significance of the last sentence of the passage. Answers may
vary. The wet dress is shaping “those mammalian ludicrosities which are the
horizons and the valleys of the earth,” which may be a reference to the human
obsession with the physical—not just the sexual, but the material element in
general. Cash (Pg. 165) 1. What is significant about this passage? It represents a return to stream-ofconsciousness narration, and it tells the reader, one imagines, what Cash’s
thoughts are as he fights in the river and as he lies on the bank, badly injured. It is
antithetical to the wrath and rage which would be coursing through Jewel, if he
were the disabled one. Interestingly, the reader does not receive Cash’s solution to
the problem of balancing Addie’s coffin.
Cora (Pg. 166)
1.
Addie tells Cora that her “daily life is an acknowledgment and expiation of
[her] sin.” What does she mean? What does Cora think she means? Every time
Addie sees Jewel, she is reminded of her adultery. The hard work of remaining with
Anse, of raising her children, of living silently with the knowledge of her sin, is her
expiation. Cora thinks she means that she is sinless in her life, and that she has
nothing she needs to reveal to God. 2.
What seems to be Addie’s opinion of grace, according to her conversation
with Cora? When Cora mentions the necessity of accepting God’s grace, Addie
merely replies, “I know my own sin. I know that I deserve my punishment. I do not
begrudge it.” It would seem that there is no place for grace in Addie’s view of life—
only actions and consequences. 3.
Where does it seem that Addie has placed her ultimate faith? In Jewel. When
Addie talks about the one who is her “cross and...salvation...[who] will save [her]
from the water and from the fire,” Cora thinks that she is talking about God, but
then realizes she is talking about Jewel. Cora thinks that Addie is “lost in her vanity
and her pride,” but what Addie has lost (or perhaps never had) was a belief in the
possibility of grace and redemption. Because she cannot be saved, she places her
hope in the results of her sin. Addie (Pg. 169) 1. Addie’s father told her that “the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a
long time.” How does this shape Addie as a teacher and as a wife? Answers may
vary. By her own estimation, Addie is a cruel teacher—she would look forward to
the ability to whip her students, because it made them “aware” of her, even in their
“secret and selfish” thoughts, because she had “marked [their] blood with [her]
own.” In other words, pain and blood were the two most effective ways, in her
mind, to leave an impression. It is in this emotional mood that she turns to discuss
her courtship: “And so I took Anse.” Clearly, the choice is wholly hers, and in her
hands lie the true power of the family. It is only on the condition that Anse return
her body to Jefferson that she will continue to live with him on their farm after the
birth of Darl.
2.
Describe the nature of Anse’s courtship of Addie. He would drive his team
four miles out of his way to go by the schoolhouse and look at Addie— when she
goes to the door to look at him, he turns his head and does not look back. Even
then, his hump is beginning to appear; Addie points out that he has no shoulders.
His ownership of a new house and a good farm are attractive to Addie, but that
seems to be it. When she asks him if he is going to marry, he responds, “That’s
what I come to see you about.” Addie initiates all phases of their courtship. 3.
What is Addie’s opinion of the relationship between words and the
experiences or images that they signify? To Addie, a word is “just a shape to fill a
lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that anymore...”
For her, Anse and love mean the same thing—which does not necessarily mean that
she was in love with Anse, or vice versa, but that he filled the role of husband in her
life, at least bodily. Words, though, are used by people who have not yet
experienced what the word signifies—this is why they need the words, in Addie’s
view. 4.
What seems to be Addie’s most prized emotional possession? Addie’s
aloneness seems to be what she values the most. Cash’s arrival as the eldest child
violates her aloneness, or forces her to be giving on many levels, many more so that
“Anse in the nights.” However, she is eventually able to steel herself against having
to give more than physical comfort to her son: her “aloneness had been violated
and then made whole again by the violation: time, Anse, love, what you will, outside
the circle.” She has been able to inoculate herself emotionally against the outside
world again. 5.
What causes Addie to have her affair with Whitfield? Answers may vary.
When Addie finds out that she is pregnant with Darl, she is furious with Anse. She
feels as though she has been tricked by him, but then realizes that they were both
tricked by words “older than Anse or love.” This may be a reference to the
inculcated ideas of family that go from generation to generation. Even so, Addie
will have revenge, but “her revenge would be that [Anse] would never know that
she was taking revenge.” The reason she chooses Whitfield specifically comes on
page 174. She chooses not only to commit the sin of adultery, but to make it “the
more utter and terrible since [Whitfield] was the instrument ordained by God who
created the sin, to sanctify that sin He had created.” When Addie is waiting for him
in the woods, she “would think of him as dressed in sin. [She] would think of him as
thinking of [her] as dressed also in sin, he the more beautiful since the garment
which he had exchanged for sin was sanctified.” This affair is arousing to her,
because he is able to abandon the word sin—which becomes the “dead word high
in the air” and actually live sin with her. 6.
What is Addie’s response to Cora? Addie thinks to herself that “words go
straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the
earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same
person to straddle from one to the other.” In other words, because Cora has not
feared, she uses the word “fear”; because Cora has not sinned, at least not to the
degree of adultery, she uses the word “sin.” Addie feels that one must first forget
the words such as sin and love and fear to be able to experience them. 7.
How does Addie rationalize her life after her affair with Whitfield? Addie’s
expiation, in her opinion, lies in these actions: “I gave Anse the children. I did not
ask for them. I did not even ask him for what he could have given me: not-Anse.
That was my duty to him, to not ask that, and that duty I fulfilled.” In other words,
staying married and giving Anse children were Addie’s way of working off the sin
of adultery. 8.
What does Addie mean by “cleaning up the house afterward”? After she has
Jewel, “the wild blood boil[s] away and the sound of it cease[s].” In other words,
she returns to her married life and begins her expiation. She gives birth to Dewey
Dell “to negative Jewel” and gives birth to Vardaman to “replace the child [she]
had robbed [Anse] of,” and so he has “three children that are his and not
[Addie’s].” And then, Addie says, she “could get ready to die,” with her house now
cleaned, at least in her mind.