Irony and Transparency

Throughout this novel, the true personality of each character becomes apparent. As the reader, you have the ability to know the ulterior motives of each character, as well as understand who they really are through their thoughts, but these thoughts are later made apparent to the characters in the story due to their extreme actions. For example, Jewel hates Darl, which becomes apparent in his physical actions when he audibly states that they should kill Darl. Darl is also insane, which was not as apparent until he burned the barn down, and then started speaking in the third person and laughing insanely while he was being taken away to a mental institute. Most of the family members had an ulterior motive to go to Jefferson. The Bundren family is extremely selfish with the exception of Jewel, which causes me to believe that he is a larger reflection of his biological father than of Addie. Even Addie Bundren's true personality came to show through this book, which was very surprising to me because of the brutal way she spoke of her family and of the children she taught. The book is so ironic that I would consider it a comedy. As I Lay Dying, is not funny in the way that it makes you laugh out loud, but it makes you scoff and just sit in disbelief over how insane the novel actually is. The largest moment of my disbelief for me was when I read the last sentence of the entire novel and Anse simply stated: "'Meet Mrs. Bundren"' (261). That three word quote from Anse creates the largest piece of irony in the novel: The family took this problematic trip to bury Addie, but everything that happens on this trip is completely unrelated to Addie: Darl burns a barn down, Cash breaks his leg, Jewel gives away his horse, and Dewey Dell gets scammed of a fake abortion. This trip is the entire plot of the story, and the reasoning is supposedly to bury Addie Bundren, but instead, Anse's true incentive was not to bury his wife, it was to marry a new wife. The most frequent literary device in this novel was irony; it seems as if every single piece of this novel was a contradiction.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 14, 2017 at 2:32 PM

    Camille,
    I came to the same conclusion you did. At first, I was confused as to why Ms. Maxey says this novel is a comedy, but I soon realized that everything that happens in this book is so pitifully ironic that it's funny. For example, it is absolutely ridiculous that these people carry around a rotting corpse for days until everyone notices a smell. Also, unsuspecting Dewey Dell falls for the logic of "undoing" her pregnancy by having sex with an imposter doctor and not actually knowing what an abortion is. And yes, the ending. Anse lugs his dead wife around the countryside just to find a new one. There are so many parts of this book where I want to scream out "WHY" in disbelief.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clarissa: A Peculiar Protagonist

Clarissa Dalloway is an interesting protagonist because she does not have many redeeming qualities and is not made to be completely loved by the readers. Although she is not made to be lovable, she does trigger compassion in the reader. Clarissa struggles to fit in with the social standard she is held to as an upper-class individual in England. Although Clarissa detests most upper-class culture, she finds herself identifying with some of the upper-class ways of life. For example, she obsesses over her dinner party, doing everything in her power to ensure it is a success. She also is very materialistic, which can be seen in her high concern of material things while walking the streets of London and peaking in shop windows. Perhaps pretending to fit in with the all of the social class elites has caused her to become part of what she despises. She triggers sympathy in the reader because she struggles internally and never acts on her complex thoughts that the reader is exposed to. After re
Read more

Elesin in Death and the King's Horseman

Elesin seems to be a very ironic character in the sense that he is very confident and self-centered, yet he is completing a very selfless act by sacrificing himself for the better of his tribe. Perhaps this is because his suicide has been set into his culture and because to Elesin killing himself is not his choice because it is something he must do: his duty to his tribe. Elesin demands to have another beautiful wife before he commits suicide, despite the fact that she is already promised to Iyaloja's son. This shows that Elesin cares little about other people and how his actions affect other people, but him committing suicide shows that he does care for other people (his tribe). Elesin is known to be very noble in his tribe and the praise-singer refers to him as an honorable man, perhaps because of how well people refer to him, he has gotten overly confident. It seems as though Elesin is mainly selfish, with the exception of one, very large selfless act he is meant to commit. The
Read more

Prospera vs. Prospero

In the Disney movie adaptation of The Tempest , Prospero is replaced by a woman, Prospera. For my school of literary criticism, I studied the feminist approach and examined Prospero, the most powerful character in the play, and his relationship with the other characters in the play, specifically Ariel and Miranda. Prospero becoming Prospera changes my approach and lense of the movie through the feminist approach. First, the argument of a patriarchal society being reflected within the Prospero's manipulative and controlling position between Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda is not valid. A patriarchal society is when men are predominately in power positions, but in the movie a woman, for once, is finally put in the ultimate power position. However, Prospera's actions do not suddenly become ethical just because of her gender. For example, putting Miranda to sleep, manipulating her marriage to Ferdinand, and the enslavement of Caliban and Ariel. The actual story and plot do not change j
Read more