The Nature of a Crazy Family in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying :: Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying

The Nature of a Crazy Family in Faulkners As I Lay DyingMy mother is a fish. (p. 79)I think that this report typifies the entire family. There is something not-quite-right about all of them. Vardeman, as Cora Tull says on scalawag 70, is outen his head with grief and worry for his mother. He has confused her with the fish because they some(prenominal) died on the same day. In his childs mind he cannot differentiate in the midst of the two. Throughout the novel he refers to his mother as a fish, as on page 196. In this scene, he is looking at the vultures that permit gathered over the wagon. Darl and immediate payment are trying to get Cashs low-pitched leg situated better for the rest of the dischargee. Vardeman thinks that his mother is not in the box. My mother does not smell like that. My mother is a fish. Darl is late going crazy. He is referred to as being queer, lazy, pottering about the place no better than Anse on page 24. However, his true madness is not shown unti l his monologue at the end of the novel after he has been arrested for burning the barn. Cash believes he did so to try to rid them of Addies body, but Darl never reveals his motivations. In his final section he seems to be looking in on himself. He refers to his body as Darl, and he asks himself What are you laughing at? All the answer he gets is Yes yes yes yes yes (253).Dewey Dell is obsessed with sex and her uncalled-for pregnancy. Every man that looks at her she looks at with her eyes kind of ruinous up and going hard like they had made to touch her as she does with Tull on page 124. Even in trying to get rid of the fetus, however, she is confronted with sex. She is none the wiser to the wiles of the doctor until afterwards when she says, It wont work . . . I just know it wont (252).Jewel has some less-than-healthy enchantment with his horse. While he frequently beats it about the head, he dummy up refers to it as a sweet son of a bitch (13). He was willing to work all n ight every night for weeks in order to buy the horse, and he disappears for a while when Anse barters it for the new team.