As I Lay Dying

“The quilt is drawn up to her chin, hot as it is, with only her two hands and her face outside. She is propped on the pillow, with her head raised so she can see out the window, and we can hear him every time he takes up the adze or the saw. If we were deaf we could almost watch her face and hear him, see him.” 

This passage shows the grotesque and darkly comic predicament of Addie’s position—propped up in her death bed—as she faces onto Cash, who is constructing her coffin. To moralistic Cora, the narrator of this passage, this taboo-confronting scenario is a prime example of the Bundrens’ crudeness and moral debility. When Cora states that deafness would lend onlookers the perspicacity to watch Addie take in the spectacle of her own coffin being made, she alludes to the overwhelming racket of Cash’s endeavor, which obscures the more uncomfortable idea that Addie is completely aware of what he is doing.

“They are rigid, motionless, terrific, the horse back-thrust on stiffened, quivering legs, with lowered head; Jewel with dug heels, shutting off the horse’s wind with one hand, with the other patting the horse’s neck in short strokes myriad and caressing, cursing the horse with obscene ferocity.” 

This passage describes the centaur-like hybrid creature that Jewel becomes when he is riding his horse. The succession of adjectives indicates that Darl, the observer, is actively constructing an impression of his brother on horseback. The juxtaposition of caressing and cursing in Jewel’s petting of his horse indicates his simultaneously aggressive and affectionate relationship with it and the contrasts of light and dark in his own character.

“I can see the fan and Dewey Dell’s arm. I said if you’d just let her alone. Sawing and knocking, and keeping the air always moving so fast on her face that when you’re tired you can’t breathe it, and that goddamn adze going One lick less. One lick less. One lick less.” 

Jewel contemplates the scene at his mother’s deathbed with disgust, even conjecturing that Cash’s effort in making Addie’s coffin and Dewey Dell’s in fanning her, are accelerating Addie’s death. The multiple subjects crammed into one sentence enhance the impression of noise and panic as Addie’s time runs out.