Goose Fight

Smithy Ide is hands down the most self deprecating character I have ever read, and his continual castigation of himself has quite a few effects on the story. I don't find it to be particularly endearing. However, it does factor into the reader's opinion of Smithy in the sense that his self deprecation is a part of the whole Smithy-to-us vs. Smithy-to-the-rest-of-the-world dichotomy, which is a thread that runs through the whole book. 

Every time Smithy says or does something stupid, he mercilessly ridicules himself for it, and, as readers of his thoughts, are privy to his private little hatefest. Whichever other characters witnessed his screw-up don't see him upbraid himself. All they see is an obese man who with seemingly sub-par social skills. We, then, see that he does in fact understand social rules and recognizes when he is awkward, other characters don't. 

The self-deprecation also complicates the issue of narrator reliability. On one hand, Smithy's self-deprecation could make us trust him. Maybe it's because he seems to trust us, or maybe it's because of the fact that he is willing to portray himself in such a negative way. I've tended to trust him.

But sometimes I wonder if he doesn't become blinded by his own self loathing. For example, when he talks about how his shorts were getting looser, it never even occurs to him that he might be losing weight, which is odd, considering how fixated he is on his size. Of course McLarty fully intended for the readers to pick up on that bit of subtext, but maybe Smithy's behavior isn't always as idiotic as he makes it out to be. 

This little concern is kind of hard to address because Smithy's narrative style. Often, his descriptions don't leave a lot of room for subjectivity: "I was 279 pounds." He gives a pretty succinct accounts of his dialogue and actions. But sometimes this succinctness (not a word?) works backward, allowing ambiguity. He assumes he seemed stupid when he said/did such and such. Do we believe him?

Smithy's lack of self-confidence is a really interesting and unique character trait, so I'm excited to see what McLarty does with it as Smithy makes his way across the country and confronts the issues from his past. 

Also sorry if the title of this post misled you, and you thought there would be a connection about fighting geese. You have been tricked into enlightenment.

Fun fact: I googled Ron McLarty, and it turns out he's an occasional TV actor and has appeared in Law and Order and did a voice in a Batman video game. Huh.

What the Faulk just happened (sorry everybody)

The ending of As I Lay Dying is pretty crazy. Darl proves the be more mentally unstable than everybody thought, Dewey Dell has some really sketchy experience at the pharmacy, and Anse GETS REMARRIED? A day after he buries his wife? Cora's gonna have a field day with this one.

Anse's remarriage certainly adds some new... dimension ... to his character. Throughout the book, the line of sympathy for Anse has been "He may be a bumbling idiot, but he's honoring his wife's dying wish and taking her to town." His whole excuse is really thrown into question when he marries the first woman he meets in twelve years, and Anse's heroism, which we've been tentatively tracking for the whole novel, is shot out of the sky. This makes the ulterior motive of new teeth look saintly.

The whole Darl situation is a lot less cut and dried. He does seem pretty whacked in his last chapter, and he did set Gillespie's barn on fire. On the other hand, as Cash points out on 233, maybe "it aint non of us pure crazy and it aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it." This observation certainly fits with the whole "what is objective reality, anyway?" theme of the book.

Anyway, let's assume that Darl is nuts. How would that bit of information affect the rest of the book? On one extreme, we could reread his highly perceptive, borderline clairvoyant moments as lunacy. Early in the book, Darl's objectivity, easier-to-read descriptions, and narration of events he is removed from compel the Faulkner-shocked reader to trust him. If he's crazy, his narration of moments like Addie's death or Jewel breaking the horse is could be completely made up. I'm not inclined to believe that they are. It's made clear that Darl knows about Dewey Dell's pregnancy, and it's fairly heavily implied that he knew about Addie's adultery. So, Darl's supposed insanity doesn't drastically change my understanding of the book. But I'm super into conspiracy theories, so comment if you have any ideas!

In the last chapter, there is a marked change between all of Darl's other narration. He starts using third person, referring to himself as "Darl" and "our brother Darl." I don't think it's that weird that he is talking about himself from his siblings' point of view, because for the whole book, Darl has specialized in extreme understanding of other people. Something must have snapped though. He was probably pushed over the edge by Addie's death. Since we never see him grieving in any other way, her death seems like a rational explanation.

In Defense of Addie

As a class, we haven't been kind to Addie. I noticed we easily decided that she was more bad than good - in some cases, all bad - and I'm going to play devil's advocate here.

Up until this point, we hadn't at all gotten a clear picture of Addie, having to formulate our opinions on snippets from Cora (mainly). From the Addie chapter, we find out how she lived her life in this depressing, apathetic limbo, marrying Anse as a way out of the school, bearing children because she feels some sort of duty, dying when she believes she's fulfilled her duty, etc.

Does she love her children? She certainly didn't love Anse. Addie's whole bit with words is that they are grossly inadequate representations of concepts, created in an attempt to convey the concepts to people who don't understand them or haven't experienced them. Addie says that when she had Cash, she and him didn't need to use the word "love," implying that they both understood it because they both loved each other. "Let Anse use it" she says.

But she doesn't seem to have any qualms about abandoning her family and just dying. That statment sounds worse than it actually is, as everybody but Vardaman is full grown, and she had no idea that Dewey Dell was pregnant. Of course, she does have this bizarre mathematical approach to her children, which probably comes from her belief that it is her duty to Anse to have his kids. Perhaps this could be the cause for resentment of her children, that they remind her of Anse? No, she says "My children were of me alone". I don't have an answer, but I don't think that we can just unequivocally say that she didn't love her children.

Nor can we say that she's just "a bad person." Considering we don't know much at all about her from other characters, we are only in a position to pass judgement on her based on information from her chapter. I identified 3 negative traits:

1. She is resigned to being unhappy.
2. She committed adultery (might I add, prompted by a loveless marriage)
3. Her affection for her children in ambiguous.

In regards to her acceptance of her unhappiness, is that really problematic or unexpected? Again, she's so locked into her role as farm-wife that there's no other course for her.

In regards to her children: As a woman in the rural South in the early 1900s, it is basically predetermined that she was going to have to have children. Maybe Addie didn't have a maternal bone in her body to begin with, and assuming that a woman who feels "violated"  by birthing her children, isolated by raising them (this comes from the whole thing where she says her aloneness was made whole again by her children), and no love for the man she bore them to, ought to have no disdain for her kids is really, really harsh.

Especially considering we have spent weeks waffling over the moral character of the perhaps well-intentioned but still useless Anse.

A related side note: The fact that Addie's motives for being buried with her people in Jefferson were vindictive is immaterial to the merit of the trek to town. We have been crediting Anse with wanting to honor his wife's dying wish and his values. It doesn't matter why she wanted to be buried in Jefferson, it matters that Anse is doing it for her. It arguably makes him a better person that he still does it, even though she's doing it to spite him (although this assumes he knows she hated him, which may or may not be the case).

Okay it is time to wrap this post up or nobody will read it. Show some compassion!