Almost all of the main characters in As I Lay Dying are incredibly strange from an outside perspective. Growing up physically and metaphorically separated from a lot of people, the Bundren family's idiosyncrasies are exaggerated. Anse's preoccupation with his teeth, laziness, and self-pity are strengthened by the other members of his family and neighbors doing all of the work around the farm. Vardaman's preoccupation with his mother as a fish is ignored by almost everyone, save for Darl, who encourages it and adds that Jewel's mother is a horse. Cash is perhaps the most normal of the family, and yet he throws himself into building the coffin, obsessing over making it perfect.
To almost every outside perspective, the Bundrens appear cartoonish, disrespectful, strange, and often unsettling. The first point of view character who didn't know the Bundrens beforehand, Armstid, says in his chapter that the Bundrens "wouldn't even stay, and that boy chasing them buzzards all day in the hot sun until he was nigh as crazy as the rest of them." (page 191). From Vardaman's point of view, him chasing away the buzzards is a perfectly logical thing to do, but to an outside perspective, he looks incredibly strange. Anse refuses Armstid's offer of food/help, which would make him seem heroic except for the fact that he has no reason to refuse it.
The next outsider that encountered the Bundrens was Samson, who says that "a woman that's been dead in a box for four days, the best way to respect her is to get her into the ground quick as you can. But they [the Bundrens] wouldn't do it." (page 116). Samson's wife is visibly disturbed by the Bundrens, and especially their treatment of Addie. Their framing of the Bundrens' journey is less like a road of trials and more like them disrespecting Addie's body and memory. Samson sees their actions as rude, stubborn, and irreverent. This also emphasizes how the Bundrens' (especially Anse's) ideas of respect are far removed from the accepted ideas of the people around them.
In Moseley's chapter, he introduces the Bundrens as "It had been dead eight days, albert said. They came from some place out in Yoknapatawpha county, trying to get to Jefferson with it [Addie]." (page 203). Moseley is one of the few town characters that get a chapter, and shows a disgust for the Bundrens beyond what he would normally feel for people from the country. As more time passes from Addie's death, and she starts to rot, all of the characters (including the Bundrens to some extent) begin to think of her less as a person and more as an object, which is at odds to their heroic demeanor. Moseley then describes the coffin, which Cash tirelessly worked on for days as "that home-made box" (page 203), with the connotation that it is as shabby and crude. Moseley's chapter solidifies the doubt that the Bundrens do not appear as heroes.
Despite Anse framing the journey as a favor he is doing for Addie, everyone outside of the family views it as him disrespecting the dead and, as the journey stretches on and they get further from the people who know them, as disgusting. Even the Bundrens begin to think of the journey as less of a quest and more of a chore, with many of the characters abandoning the pretense of respecting Addie's last wishes.
I really like your analysis of the outsiders' view of the Bundrens. I think that Faulker wrote in the outsiders to vindicate the reader's view of the Bundrens. As the book goes on, the reader might start sympathizing with the family and start to disagree with the Outsiders, namely MacGowan.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, I think viewing the Bundrens' journey from the perspective of the outsiders adds another angle to the reader's interpretation of the book as a Hero's Journey. Most outsiders seem to think Anse is disrespecting his wife rather than honoring her by waiting to bury her in Jefferson, and since he had ulterior motives in making the journey, they're kind of right. To be honest, he probably wouldn't have gone at all if there weren't other things he wanted to accomplish in town. Nobody is fully focused on respecting Addie and getting her to Jefferson as soon as possible, and this is reflected in the way their actions look to outsiders.
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