Blooms Literary Themes - THE GROTESQUE.pdf - ymerleksi - home

20William FaulknerMost importantly, the funerary process not only fails to conceal theindignity of death, but actually parades that indignity across twocounties as the stinking corpse with attendant buzzards makes itshalting progress. And finally, the climactic burial is apparently wipedaway from the consciousness of the narrators and hidden from thereader.On arriving at Jefferson, the Bundrens are understandably anxiousto “get her underground” (235), but in the seven narrative segmentsthat are set in Jefferson, the only reference made to Addie after herburial comes with Anse’s obviously insincere bullying of Dewey Dellwhen he takes her money: “[M]y own daughter, the daughter of mydead wife, calls me a thief over her mother’s grave” (256). Obviously,he makes a travesty of Addie’s memory by invoking it only to furtherhis own shabby purpose. Otherwise, everyone seems to forget aboutAddie after the burial. Even Vardaman’s anguish is displaced bythoughts of bananas, the toy train, and observations of a stray cow,perhaps a ghostly echo of the lost mother (251). We can supposethat Jewel has not forgotten, but the text does not allow him a voice.So when the novel’s last sentence names the duck-shaped woman as“Mrs. Bundren,” Addie has disappeared altogether, and along withher, any high motivation for the journey, which turns out to be more adisposing-of than a tribute.This erasure of Addie connects with the text’s subversion ofanother idealism, the idea of the family united in love. The terribletensions among the Bundrens emerge in Jewel’s furious monologue,where he apparently wishes that Cash and Anse had died aftersuffering their accidents and imagines himself smashing everyonewith stones in order to protect Addie and keep her to himself alone(15). Later, Jewel was absent at the moment of his mother’s death.Reading closely, we come to realize that Darl, probably motivatedby jealousy, has deliberately spoiled Addie’s last moments of life byremoving her favorite, Jewel, from the scene. When Anse is uncertainwhether to send the brothers on the wood-hauling errand, it is Darlwho argues that they should go because they need the three dollars(17). He tells Dewey Dell he knows Addie will die before they getback (28), and he starts taunting Jewel about the impending death assoon as they are on the road (39). How do we reconcile the perpetratorof this nasty maneuver with the sensitive, poetic Darl who drinksfrom a dipper full of stars (11)? Then we have Addie declaring Anse