Concepts/Themes/Analysis Flashcards
Stream of Consciousness
“Stream of consciousness” is a technique of narration whereby the author writes as though inside the minds of the characters.
- Faulkner attempts to capture the phenomenon of jumping between thoughts, which can make the passages confusing (though comprehension can vary from being very complex to very simple).
Prior to the twentieth century, an author would simply tell the reader what one of the characters was thinking.
Free Association
Corresponds to the concept of “stream of consciousness” ― one thought jumps to another without any indication of a change.
In short, it is a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind.
People tend to correspond words with specific events and details.
- Word association is based on Carl Gustav Jung’s approach to personality. Jung discovered connection between groups of thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions with words and related concepts.
Received v. authentic ideas
Received ideas: what society expects or imposes
Authentic ideas: one’s true feelings and beliefs
The Bundren family’s journey to bury their mother reveals how each person deals with their own desires versus what they’re “supposed” to do
- EXAMPLE: At this time (1930s), when a woman becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she is to a.) marry the father of that child and b.) carry out the term. Dewey Dell was not taught by her mother of these roles, and therefore thinks for herself and refuses to get married and have the baby, as she is too young to be put in that position.
Animal Magnetism
Believers of animal magnetism claimed that a vital force coursed throughout all things in the form of a current.
A magnetizer was a “heater” with a willpower to redirect the current to diseased parts of a body to affect a cure.
How is the concept of animal magnetism incorperated within the novel?
It is Cash’s reason for building the coffin on a bevel.
As he has apparently distorted this law to make it apply to a dead body.
- The animal magnetism of the dead must be so strong that it exterts tremendous stress on joints and seams. When a body is laying on a bed, the stress is horizontal.
- However, the body is not angular like a cross-tie and so stress is horizontal and vertical at all possible degrees.
Therefore, the bevels would correspond to the stress, relieving pressure.
If the coffin was not build on a bevel, the stress of the animal magnetism would be antagonistic to the seam and pull it apart.
“My mother is a fish”
- Vardaman
Psychological confusion after witnessing Addie’s death.
Vardaman is trying to make logic of the situation, comparing his mom to the fish he caught.
- The fish was once a fish, alive and well, until it was caught, and Vardaman cut it up. The fish was a fish at first, but after it deceased, it wasn’t a fish anymore.
He is basically saying that his mother was his mother, until she died, and now she wasn’t anymore.
Vardaman doesn’t exactly understand the death of his mother, so in his eyes, comparing her to a fish was the best thing he could do.
Role of women
Become a teacher, or become a wife. ↓
Marriage is patriarchal and capitalist in nature.
- The man is the owner, the woman a worker, whose only purpose to the owner is producing children for profit and while staying confined to working conditions.
Roles of women
Cora/Addie
Cora: god fearing, sexless mother
Addie: seductress, violates the “virtous woman” myth
Words v. thoughts
Addie asserts that words are “just words,” that fall short of the ideas and emotions they seek to convey.
- While each inner monologue carries busy thoughts and ideas, very little of them are ever expressed through verbal communication.
All of the characters are so protective of their inner thoughts that the busy content of their minds is translated to only the barest, most simple scraps of dialogue, which leads to miscommunication between the characters
Words v. actions
Addie takes the extreme stand that language is always ineffective.
- In an effort to communicate, people try to recreate “reality” through a system of signs. They try communicate actions, experiences, and feelings through language, spoken, written. But they are only trying. They can never actually recreate the reality that they have experienced.
They can only “say at” that experience because words, by their nature, are imprecise and unstable.
Addie does not trust words. She wants to get as close to actual phenomena as possible (motherhood, sex, love, etc). Actions, objects, and emotions are reality to her; words that describe these are a step removed from reality and can never appropriate it. At the very beginning of the novel, Faulkner presents her as a woman who must see to believe.
Words v. actions
Characters
Cash: both a man of words and actions, sees life as a series of tasks that he faithfully performs one after another
Darl: a man of words, life is a game–a linguistic game
Jewel: a man of action, life seems to be an enemy to Jewel, who lives in a state of unexplained fury
Dewey Dell: both a woman of words and actions, unconsciously and effortlessly, gives herself over to the forces of nature
Vardaman: neither, cannot comprehend, a child who sees the world through a child’s eyes; he finds life confusing and sometimes scary
- Again, to Addie, life is a lonely passage because she believes that the only chance of entering another person’s consciousness, or reality, is through words, and words are inadequate in accomplishing this relationship to her.
Addie’s favoritism
Addie Bundren’s attitude at the time of the birth of each of her children is reflected in the personality and actions of the child.
Cash to Addie
♡
Cash penetrated into her aloneness and had thereby given meaning to her life and is therefore at peace with the world (works on one level of consciousness, performing one task at a time).
But soon after Cash’s birth, Addie realized that words are not connected with violence and are useless. Only through violence, and not through words, can Addie feel that she is living.
Darl to Addie
Darl could never help violate her aloneness because as she came to this conclusion (s. previous card), she discovered that she had Darl. Thus Addie felt that somehow she had been tricked by Anse’s words, and because she had been tricked, she could never accept Darl.
- In view of Addie’s rejection of words and her subsequent rejection of Darl, he became the one character who depended the most on the value of words.
It is ironic that Darl later inquires into the intricacies of life.
Jewel to Addie
♡
Jewel had been conceived in violence, and he therefore became her natural choice for salvation. (But both the love and the salvation have to be products of violence.)
- This violence is displayed through the love and violent treatment of his horse, and the salvation is seen through his rescuing Addie’s body from the river and the burning barn.
He responds to all events with violent actions.
