Introduction
Cash Bundren’s
life experiences and personal desires influence his practical preference for the
masochistic insanity of sado-masochistic and materialistic society over the
sadistic anti-materialistic insanity of individuals like his younger brother,
Darl. Or, as Urgo states: “[As I lay
Dying] is a drama where human understanding is created and projected by the
mind, reflected in the structures and the products of social realities,
overturned by human conflict with inherited meaning and value, and created
again” (Urgo 13). From the beginning of the novel, initially through Darl’s
perspective, we see Cash as a man fixated on materials, who places man-made
above natural. Through multiple character perspectives, Cash is depicted as a
“good carpenter” (Faulkner 3) dedicated to building his mother, Addie, the best
handcrafted coffin possible (Faulkner 20), through use of the new tools he
purchased from a catalog (Faulkner 91). The reality is that Cash works to earn
money to supply himself with material goods meant to ease his life (new tools
make jobs easier; the graphophone makes rest easier).
Cash is the
product of a mass production, cash-for-trade society that values things (coffin, barn, etc.) created over
people (Addie, Cash, Peabody, etc.)
created. In such a world, Cash acts as a contradiction between high-regard for the
efforts (man’s sweat) put into creation and the natural inclination to sympathize
with individuals (Cash himself, Darl) in horrendous situations. Every
perspective is situational; in Cash’s perspective, no situation legitimizes the
destruction of man-made materials, not even a forty mile trek with the rotting
carcass of his dead mother and the pain of his broken and concreted-over leg
(Faulkner 138). Analyzing Cash’s progression from coffin carpenter to graphophone
listener enables the reader to view Cash as a masochist successfully
assimilated into a sadistic society. In this kind of materialistic and
sado-masochistic world, an individual focused on the practicality of materials sanely
puts the well-being of other individuals behind the acquisition of materials. As
such, Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying,
effectively captures the contrariness of a society based in collective materialistic
understanding tainted by personal motivations, cynically driven to procure at
the cost the ephemeral “Other,” and destined to destroy any who refuse to
assimilate.
Collective Materialism Tainted by Personal Motivation
Cash was
personally motivated to build the casket for Addie, his mother. The reasons
went beyond what one might consider love of one’s parent. In his 1988 essay,
“William Faulkner and the Drama of Meaning: The Discovery of the Figurative in As I Lay Dying,” Joseph R. Urgo wrote, “What
[Addie] bequeaths to Cash, her first born, is her literal-minded approach to
life, her ledger-book morality and her sense of measured justice—all of which
Cash converts into the principles of craftsmanship and physical productivity” (Urgo
16). He built the casket because he had to, no other casket would be obtained,
and no other person would step forward to create it. Cash is a carpenter, his
mother needed a casket, his family had the materials on-hand and the tools
required, but not the funds to purchase a casket, knowing the state of affairs
as he does, Cash sinks into the task of building, creating.
Cash’s first
chapter lists the reasons he “made [the casket] on the bevel” (Faulkner 48).
The list offers post-production reasons because his rhythm, overthrown by the
act of satisfactory completion, was thwarted by familial incompetence. In his “mind,”
he isn’t checking off completed acts, he’s checking off reasons for building,
justifications for past completed actions reviewed during the process of
completion. The casket isn’t a finished creation until its filled, buried, and
the dirt settled “on the bevel” (Faulkner 48). Cash knows the casket is meant
to house the body of his dead mother, who happens to be living while he is
creating. Later, when she is put into the casket in reverse, he contemplates
the reasons for his earlier actions—building on the bevel—the material item
(casket) was designed to hold weight in a specific way, non-adherence to that
design creates instability in the product. Rosemary Franklin tells us that,
“The key that unlocks the puzzle of the thirteen points is ‘Animal magnetism,’
the eighth. Cash’s entire theory of carpentry is built upon his understanding
of this pseudo-science. Indeed, the concept of magnetism metaphorically
permeates the entire novel and, in many cases, helps to clarify problems
encountered in characters other than Cash” (Franklin 25). In this case, the magnetism of
one item acts upon the magnetism of another item, Cash’s superimposition of
this theory upon his carpentry reflects the depth of his materialism, he is
hyper-aware of material forces. She goes on to explain:
The followers of
animal magnetism, a kind of hypnotism, believed that a vital principle coursed
through all living things in the form of a fluid or current. The devoted
magnetizer was serious: he viewed himself as a healer more than an entertainer.
With the powers of his will and of the magnetic vapors said to issue from the
patient, he believed that he was able to direct the vital fluid to the diseased
part of the body and thereby to effect a cure. Certain persons had more will,
or magnetic powers, than others; and some persons made better subjects,
especially those who lived a simple, rural life (Franklin 25).
Cash worries about his product
because he is an impoverished carpenter living in a materialistic society. He
must be skillful enough to obtain enough business to gain enough capital to
procure the materials he needs (tools) to fulfill his desires (graphophone). In
this sense, Cash’s hyper-awareness has assimilated into society through a
measure of materialism that he prides himself in, possessions obtained through labor.
Interestingly, there is nothing but humiliation in the way Cash actually
achieves the fruition of his desire (graphophone), broken, bloodied, and
bruised. With every ounce of his early efforts thwarted by the ineptitude of
others, the injured Cash has no recourse but to noncommittally bear the
sadistic brunt of the Bundren’s frustrations and anticipation.
Procurement Regardless of Cost to Ephemeral “Other”
The focus of
balance, for Cash, is simple logic dictating that a body directionally balanced
within a coffin is not only easier to carry, but the “correct” way to use the
created materials. The craftsman, Cash, has produced a presumably well-built
coffin for Addie that is misused by the living who thrust her backwards into
the box; that action throws off every minutia of energy Cash invested in
perfecting the product. He obsesses over the loss of balance, his every warning
going unheard, his second chapter hangs unfinished in mid-sentence, emulating
the nothing heard by those within his own society. There in the empty space of
Cash’s second and third chapters hangs the useless expectation of the
conclusion of the warning that future dangers are just as uselessly pleaded
against. His family’s focus is not on the journey, but the destination (the
procurement of goods/services).
At the
river-crossing, during which Cash’s leg is rebroken, the casket nearly lost,
the mules drowned, and his tools swallowed by the river only to be saved by
Jewel and Vernon; Cash has reached what should be the emotional climax of a
carpenter’s nightmare. Cash lays despondent and helpless on the bank, broken
and vomit-y, while others retrieve his tools (Faulkner 90-94). Cash doesn’t complain
simply because doing so would not alter the situation. “But the realism is of
an epistemological nature, and the reality projected in the novel comes into
perpetual conflict with the reader’s own ‘better’ judgments. Nonetheless, the
ammunition in this conflict is identified by Faulkner as consisting of a
magazine of images, metaphors, and projections—of figurations—that the characters volley at one another (and at the
reader) in an effort to ‘know’ what is happening to themselves, to each other,
and to the environment” (Urgo 14). This materialistic reality represented
through the social interactions of imagery and sound is merely in the early
transitional stages, but the seeds of technological extravagance have been
planted in the hard-baked clay of Southern poverty. The Bundrens each attempt
to obtain some form of fulfillment at the cost of the ephemeral “Other,”
arguably, Cash suffers the most for the fulfillment of both himself and the
others.
Destined to Destroy Any Who Refuse to Assimilate
Cash’s last
chapter spatially exists in multiple time-frames (before Peabody ’s,
during Peabody ’s, and after Peabody ’s). Here we see Cash ignoring (or,
disassociating) himself (and the pain of his leg) for the actions of Anse, that
ultimately lead to Cash’s one “desire” being fulfilled. In this section, Cash
brushes over the visit with Dr. Peabody and focuses on the actions that Anse takes
to acquire his new wife and her graphophone; which means that even though Anse
used Cash’s money and Cash’s injury made him unable to work to earn more money,
Cash still acquired the item he was earning money for: the graphophone. Darl’s
inability to wait it out silently, like Cash, is only part of what lands Darl
in the asylum. Elizabeth Kerr claims Cash’s materialistic “…analysis of Darl
may be the ironic equivalent of the ‘unusual wisdom or power’ gained by
mutilation, but it cannot aid Darl. Cash also dwells upon the idea that
‘nothing justifies the deliberate destruction of what a man has built with his
own sweat’ (514-515), referring to the coffin which Darl had tried to burn and
reflecting his craftsman’s pride” (Kerr 12). Attempting to burn a corpse and
destroying a barn are physical manifestations of Darl’s anti-materialism and
proof of his distaste for the sadistic Bundren society.
In the End, They Lived for Stuff
In later chapters,
it appears as if Cash were resigned to the horrors of the journey, nonchalant
(perhaps even, despondent). Fine is the line which exists between cold
practicality and callous disinterest: “In pretending to give a direct quotation
of the character’s mind, interior monologue…necessarily equates consciousness
with plausible language use and, as a result, distinguishes an individual’s
private world as being only what he chooses not to say aloud” (Hale 9). Cash
chooses not to speak about his leg, though in earlier sections he would not
stop speaking about the beveling of the coffin. For Cash speaking about his
injuries vocalizes the pain but does not change the pain, besides, he spoke of
the beveling while there was an opportunity to correct the imbalance. After the
river-crossing, Cash becomes fully aware of the futility of pleading with his
family, therefore he stops trying: “…although Cash has the capacity to
understand these truths about human nature, he ultimately puts the protection
of the social over the individual good…” (Hale 19). The sado-masochistic
contrariness of the Bundren’s society is preserved by the silence of Cash, the
institutionalization of Darl, and the acquisition of new materials. Every nuance of Cash is masochism idealized
in the name of materialism; everything from his capitalistic name to his
brutalized physical condition to his last materialistic act (listening to new
records), and even, his passing nostalgia for Darl (Faulkner 149) testifies to
the sado-masochistic nature of the individual’s internal struggle with external
assimilation.
The very nature of Faulkner’s chosen subjects, the
Bundrens, gives rise to the perspective that each individual sees only a
portion of the picture and that picture is tainted by the views, needs, and
wants of others within the immediate social circle. As such, Cash’s masochism
becomes but one painful road to materialistic fulfillment and one horrifying
exodus into depressingly cynical modernist canon.
***
Works Cited
Faulkner,
William. As I Lay Dying. Norton
Critical Edition. Ed. Michael Gorra. W.W. Norton Company, Inc.: New York . 2010.
Franklin,
Rosemary. “Animal Magnetism in ‘As I Lay Dying’.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18. No. 1. (Spring, 1966). Pp. 24-34. The John Hopkins
University . Accessed: 14 Sept. 2010.
Hale,
Dorothy. “‘As I Lay Dying’s’ Heterogenous Discourse.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 23. No. 1 (Autumn, 1989), pp.5-23.
Duke University Press. . Accessed:
12 Sept 2010
Kerr,
Elizabeth M. “’As I Lay Dying’ as Ironic Quest.” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature.
Vol. 3. No. 1. (Winter, 1962). pp. 5-19. University of Wisconsin . Accessed: 14 September 2010.
Slaughter,
Carolyn Norman. “As I Lay Dying: Demise of
Vision”American Literature. Vol.
61.No. 1. (Mar., 1989). pp. 16-30. Duke University Press.
. Accessed: 14 September 2010.
Urgo,
Joseph R. “William Faulkner and the Drama of Meaning: The Discovery of the
Figurative in ‘As I Lay Dying’.” South Atlantic
Review. Vol. 53. No. 2. (May, 1988), pp. 11-23. South
Atlantic Modern Language Association.
. Accessed: 14 Sept. 2010.
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