During our class discussion of As I Lay Dying, we frequently wondered whether any of the characters could be considered the hero of the story. As I recall, there was no real consensus. Anse is portrayed as weak, stupid, and emotionally manipulative, which makes me hesitant to deem him a hero even though he "wins" in the end. Darl is the primary narrator for most of the book, but his own opinions are almost never displayed, which makes him a rather empty hero. Cash and Jewel act in a very heroic manner during the river-crossing and barn-burning scenes, but they function more as scenery than fleshed-out characters for the rest of the story. Addie is dead, and Dewey Dell and Vardaman (the last members of the Bundren clan) seem too confused and childlike to be proper heroes. However, the Bundren journey does appear to follow the heroic arc described by Joseph Campbell (well, after a fashion...), from the refusal of the call to adventure to the supreme ordeal and final resolution. What hero, then, is completing the hero's journey?
I argue that As I Lay Dying does in fact contain a more satisfying hero, if we're willing to consider the three eldest Bundren siblings together. This isn't quite as strange as it may seem. According to Sigmund Freud, all psyches are comprised of three elements: the Id, Ego, and Superego. (Yes, I know that many of Freud's ideas were crazy and have been discredited, but this stuff is everywhere in popular culture and so I believe that the analysis is still valid. Just bear with me.) The Id represents one's basic instincts and raw emotions: the unconscious and disorganized drives for life and death. The Superego represents one's conscience and desire to conform to society's ideas of morality, and the Ego is a sort of middleman that comprimises between the contradictory demands of the Id and Superego. Although these elements are supposed to be pieces of an individual mind, they are often used to create characters in books and television shows. For example, in Star Trek, Doctor McCoy represents the Id with his angry outbursts, Spock represents the Superego with his emotionless logic, and Kirk mediates between them as the Ego. In the Harry Potter books, Ron, Hermione, and Harry fill the same roles respectively.
In As I Lay Dying, I think that the eldest Bundrens are also a Freudian trio. Cash is incredibly stoic and focused on doing things the "right" way regardless of the cost. After his leg is set with cement, he soundlessly faints from the pain after repeatedly saying "it don't bother none." This sort of emotionless calmness is characteristic of the Superego. Jewel is almost the exact opposite of this. His catchphrase is "Goddamnit" and he spends most of his time yelling angrily about either Addie or his horse. This wild, unconstrained emotion is very akin to that displayed by the Id. Although we never get much of a sense of personality from Darl, we do see that he is able to relate to both Jewel and Cash. He's almost like the ultimate Ego: he can see into everyone's heads and mediates between them with his clairvoyant narration. If we look at them as three parts of a whole, perhaps they could be the hero of the narrative. Jewel and Cash's heroic acts complement each other, and Darl provides them with a significant narrative voice. Notably, Cash becomes significantly more talkative after Darl breaks down at the end of the book, almost as if there were some sort of connection between their abilities to narrate the chapters. Although the Freudian trio is broken up with Darl's arrest, the conclusion could still seem heroic in the sense of an epic tragedy. Cash/Darl/Jewel was progressing along a heroic path, until all three aspects of them were damaged by Anse's selfish desire to operate without any sort of assistance. This is not unlike, say, Othello, who was heroic until Iago's evil tricked him into killing his own wife. What do all of you think about this? Is any individual character a hero in this story, do we need to look at some combination of them, or is there no hero at all?
The common theme of the characters being screwed over by Anse holds us very well, as we can see how one man's selfish desires have adverse, yet varied, effects on all of the characters. I think the concept holds up pretty well for the most part, as the only real variation from the dynamic is Darl straying away from the Ego after his arrest and declared insanity. Cash almost transitions into the Ego after Darl's breakdown, as Cash seems to be the most sensible character in the novel, but starts to express more emotion than earlier, not simply acting stoically and pouring his emotions into his work on the coffin. The drastic differences between the three brothers provide ideal conditions for examining this dynamic, as we can see the idiosyncrasies of each character at play during key scenes in the novel, such as crossing the river, and garner from these knowledge about characters' tendencies and personalities.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Cash, Darl, and Jewel combine to create a single hero. I think that they work together well. In the river crossing scene, I think that the order/condition in which they get to shore is sort of like how a single person would probably react. In a situation like that, your super rational self (Cash) probably wouldn't be used, and in the book Cash is passed out on the river shore. Darl, the mediator, attempts to assist with catching the coffin, but he can't succeed. Finally, in a sort of fight-or-flight reaction, Jewel catches the coffin.
ReplyDeleteOoh, that's a very interesting point! Jewel's no-nonsense heroism in both the river-crossing and barn-burning scenes could be seen as a takeover of the mind by the Id. Similarly, one might argue that Cash is able to take over narration in the ending because the powerful grief experienced by the trio over Addie's death is beginning to fade, allowing rationality and conformity to triumph.
DeleteI like this idea a lot, and it's interesting to consider the various tensions among these characters within the hero-triad in this light (Darl's harassment of Jewel; Jewel's anger to everyone, even when he's actively collaborating in the struggle; Cash and Darl's more sympathetic clairvoyant communication and Cash's doubts about the rightness of what happens to Darl at the end). Anse serves something like the structural role of the traditional hero--the visionary (which seems funny to say about this guy!) who sets the whole thing in motion and is something like its moral/emotional core, and his three sons together take on the active role of "hero," in light of Anse's total ineptness in the role.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very thought provoking post. I hadn't considered that there were three protagonists before, but it definitely seems plausible to me now, especially since we couldn't come to a consensus on who the protagonist was. The three men do seem to take on the role of hero together, while separately they don't really seem to constitute a hero, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteReading through the story, I was bothered by who the "hero" we were reading about supposedly was. It seemed that the journey centered around Anse's stubbornness, but I never really thought of him as a hero; he's too... (I was going to find some sort of word to describe him, but words like "pathetic" and "useless" only scratch the surface, the only real word to describe him is "Anse"). I did wonder about Jewel, Cash, and Darl being heroes, and the idea of them being a Freudian trio really makes sense to me.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting idea you have here. I could never really pick one character as the protagonist myself. In class we weren't able to fully decide which character was the protagonist either. I had never really considered that there could be three of them but after reading your post I think it's definitely a possibility.
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