Thus, Cash seldom speaks in the novel and usually only after some action is performed. Furthermore, he seems to be concerned with only one act at a time. Thus, he is the natural choice for the building of the coffin because he, like Addie, knows that the finished product is more important than the words expressed about it.
His first section comes after he has the coffin almost completed, and this section simply enumerates the thirteen steps or reasons why and how he built the coffin. Like Addie, Cash seems to know that words are useless.
When Darl is sent off to the insane asylum, Cash seems to be somewhat justified in his view toward words. He says, "ain't none of us pure crazy and ain't none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way."
He is the one whom Addie refers to when she says that she robbed Anse of one son. Cash was born at a time when his mother had just discovered that words are meaningless and that only through acts can people achieve an awareness of life.
Addie Bundren, the wife of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor southern family, is very ill, and is expected to die soon. Her oldest son, Cash, puts all of his carpentry skills into preparing her coffin, which he builds right in front of Addie's bedroom window.
Cash, Addie's oldest son, has to build the coffin that they will bury Addie in. To try and give her a “last gift,” Cash decides to build the coffin right outside of Addie's window as she lays in her bed, dying.
Darl is the most articulate character in the book; he narrates 19 of the 59 chapters. Much of the plot is fueled and narrated by Darl as, throughout the book, he descends into insanity. Jewel Bundren – Jewel is the third of the Bundren children, most likely around nineteen years of age.
Throughout almost all of Darl's sections, he will describe Jewel in wooden imagery and often associate Jewel with the wooden wagon. Later, when Darl and Jewel are earning the three dollars for the load of lumber, Darl tells of the death of Addie Bundren while Jewel is in a "wooden" setting.
1. Robert Parker, in Faulkner and the Novelistic Imagination, estimates the ages of the Bundren children (except for Vardaman) as follows: Dewey Dell, seventeen; Jewel, eighteen; Darl, twenty- seven or twenty- eight; Cash, over twenty- eight (25 – 26).
Dewey Dell throws herself on Darl, clawing at him, to ensure the officials get him. She goes to a local pharmacy and offers ten dollars (but pays more in dignity fees) to MacGowan for a supposed abortion fix. She is coerced into having sex with MacGowan in the cellar.
The average reader will spend 4 hours and 27 minutes reading this book at 250 WPM (words per minute).
If you think of it as a modern story told in a modern way then you're not going to get through. I picked this book up thinking it would be an easy read and I liked Faulkner stories. The book was a tough one to get used to, but as I read I started to hear the characters become themselves.
As I Lay Dying Cash Their oldest son, who is the carpenter and who builds the coffin for Addie. He is about twenty-nine. Darl The second son, about twenty-eight. He is the son most given to introspection and thought.
Cash is the oldest son. He is the one whom Addie refers to when she says that she robbed Anse of one son. Cash was born at a time when his mother had just discovered that words are meaningless and that only through acts can people achieve an awareness of life.
Cash's manner throughout the turmoil of Addie's death is incredibly deliberate, and it seems fitting that he acquires a limp, the perfect physical complement to his slow, stunted approach to all things emotional. Vardaman and Jewel, however, come close to finding a middle ground between these extremes.
Anse and Cash therefore declare Darl crazy for financial reasons; Jewel accepts it violently and anxiously out of the heightened enmity between them.
When Darl is sent off to the insane asylum, Cash seems to be somewhat justified in his view toward words. He says, "ain't none of us pure crazy and ain't none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way.". The act itself that Darl performed seems to Cash to be right; therefore, it was the talking about the act ...
Cash reflects Addie's views about the uselessness of words and sees only one action at a time, and his main concern is with each immediate action.