We talked a little bit in class about how Faulkner might be critiquing Southern culture through As I Lay Dying by juxtaposing the characters against each other; if Anse is the sponge, then Cash is the teeth. If Jewel is the beloved illegitimate child, Darl is the hated legitimate child (assuming I read “And now he has three children that are his and not mine” correctly in that Addie indicts Darl because of Anse–page 102).
But what I thought was interesting was how Faulkner uses Darl and Jewel against each other that, in a way, creates a very pessimistic view of not only Southern culture, but a Southern family as well. In the first half of the novel, Jewel is seen as the outsider. He is the illegitimate child that Darl torments, that works nights on his own to buy his own horse, that rides the horse rather than the wagon with the coffin and the rest of the family, that barely speaks. Darl is the insider–he is the “trusted” narrator, he rides with the family in the wagon with the coffin, he does what he’s supposed to. Using the river crossing as the catalyst, Faulkner almost immediately causes the two to switch places. Darl’s devolution from “trusted” to maniacal and possibly insane [“yes yes yes yes yes” (146)] turns him into the outsider as he is shipped to Jackson while Jewel becomes the insider as he integrates himself into the family and becomes more like them by getting rid of the horse, standing on the street corner, saving the coffin and the animals–when Anse introduces the new Mrs. Bundren, he says “It’s Cash and Jewel and Vardaman and Dewey Dell” (149). There is no mention of Darl at all.
It is a very pessimistic depiction of Southern culture because Faulkner reveals that there’s always the outsider in Southern culture. That you can’t truly be a Southern family unless your family has “a black sheep” or, as we said in class, someone just lacks being there.