Having read the book before, I'm looking for signs of something different--something that brings Anse Bundren into the realm of the human and humane. And it's here and it's interesting and it is one of those things that makes one pause and go, "Hmmmmm."
from As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner[Dewey Dell narrating]
Pa helps himself and pushes the dish on. But he does not begin to eaat. His hands are halfclosed on either side of his plate, his head bowed a little, his awry hair standing into the lamplight. He looks like right after the maul hits the steer and it no longer alive and dont yet know that it is dead.
But Cash is eating, and he is too. "You better eat something," He says. He is looking at pa. "Like Cash and me. You'll need it."
"Ay," pa says. He rouses up, like a steer that's been kneeling in a pond and you run at it. "She would not degrudege me it."
This from the man who in his own sections says:
from As I Lay Dying William Faulkner[Anse Bundren narrating]
But it's a long wait, seems like. It's bad that a fellow must earn the reward of his right-doing by flouting hisself and his dead. We drove all the rest of the day and got to Samson's at dust-dark and then that bridge was gone, too. They hadn't never see the river so high, and it not done raining yet. There was old men that hadn't never see nor hear of it being so in the memory of a man. I am the chosen of the Lord, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth. But I be durn if He dont take some curious ways to show it, seems like.
But now I can get them teeeth. That will be a comfort. It will.
Addie's death gives him the excuse to drive to Jefferson, a day's cart-trip away to bury her, but also to pick up some false teeth along the way. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.
