What the Faulk

Sorry for the trashy pun, but that's really what my reaction to "As I Lay Dying" is right now - like huhhhh?? That being said, it's not terrible to follow the general idea of whats going on once you get the characters down - everyone's waiting for Addie to die, Anse doesn't really have a good reputation with the people around him and doesn't really accept his wife's death until he put her in the coffin (I'd assume so), Cash is hard at work making the coffin, Dewey Dell wants to do something about her pregnancy without her mom knowing about it, Jewel who's kind of the odd ball due to his physical aspects (according to Darl he's HUGE) and his unusual anger (refer to page 14 when he narrates: "God what the hell is He for", and keeps on repeating "One lick less") and also his "idrc" attitude like what (we don't really get to see his reaction when Darl asks him about whether or not their mother will die or when he tells him his mother's dead, but I get the feeling that his reaction was cut off means that he really didn't care much - also his attitude in general like it's raining he's all soaked and he's shown to not really care - this is page 52 btw); the Tulls who are the Bundren's neighbor and helps out once in a while, and finally Vardaman who's trying to make sense of his mother's death by believing she's a fish because he's five and has little exposure to the concept of death (I'd hope so). Oh and then theres the doc Peabody who comes in and is straight up like "Help me move I'm obese and just so you know I'm only going in if she's about to die because I don't want to nurse him back to health" - by the way WHAT KIND OF DOCTOR IS THAT??? Did you really need to tell the audience that... literally the second line of his narration (on page 41). What an image.

It's the specifics that catch me off guard. A lot of you guys already mentioned this - why does Darl know so much... to be honest if it wasn't Faulkner I would've just disregarded that as bad story telling skills, but since he's so famous there's gotta be something about it that makes the book so popular.

Though most of us are either confused or straight up not like it, but I suppose a reason is that some people enjoy a character who also acts as a narrator? I guess I can kinda see it that way - it's untraditional, so maybe people wanted something new, and see what a character in the story would be like if he knew everything that was going on? I mean if I knew all the stuff that's going on with the people around me I'd - wait nvm I really don't want to know that details of some things.

At any rate, when Darl figures out about Dewey Dell's pregnancy (also anyone noticed that she's the only one with two parts to her first name? I wonder why - some of them have names related $$$ like Cash, Jewel, and then there's Darl that kinda is like darling I think? Those make sense, for a family who's stuggling on money and how to keep functioning. Dewey Dell just reminds me of pickles. Maybe it's a play on words about how her life sucks, but I can't really see anything? I mean being the only girl in the family now after your mom passes away and you have to take care of people esp. little Vardaman and then dealing with a pregnancy? Jeez) , I can't help but get that feeling of "oh damn you just got caught". We also get a special kind of interaction that we can't get without his omniscience, such as him telling Jewel about their mother's death, and how he sees the interactions going on at home - I'm assuming these are visions of the present time, and not hallucinations, but who knows.

And to much disappointment I can't really think up any other reasons as to why Faulkner gave Darl so much power. Any ideas? I feel like most of this post is going off on tangents, but usually my tangents are more fruitful than my actual point so I'll leave them there.

*UPDATE* for people who've already read this sry for this late thing but I take back about Jewel not caring cuz I read a part where he gets mad when yea I won't spoil it jic ur reading it rn but yea no he cares.

The mortality of immortals

The Greek Gods are not the all loving lord and savior with impeccable virtue, like in other religions such as Christianity - oh dear no. We've talked about this in class, primarily with the example of Poseidon's complaining to Zeus - to give a brief reminder, it went something like this:

"Hey Zeus I don't feel appreciated enough - I want to torture Odysseus some more but my Phaeacians kinda just took him to land and now I can't do much about it."
"Poseidon please we all respect you. Is someone disrespects you just screw them over."
"Wait really I thought you'd get mad if I did - well in that case, imma go crush their ships as they come home then stick a mountain up their port"
"Nah man that's no fun you gotta let them see their hometown, and have everyone see them coming home - then you turn them into a rock, so every time someone looks out, they'll feel the sorrow resulting from your discomfort. Oh then you can go stick a mountain up their port."

Obviously this isn't Homer's language, but you get the point. There's no doubt that this exchange shows the Gods' sadistic nature. I digress - the fact that after all these millennium of years, it seems that Poseidon didn't know what his brother was like, like what? How? His not knowing that Zeus would be fine with him smiting disrespectful people seemed a bit weird to me - I would've thought that the Greek Gods would've sorted things out within their time. Then again, the Phaeacians didn't really try to disrespect Poseidon, they were just trying to get a friend home asap... it's not the people's fault that they didn't know what their main God wanted... but who knows maybe it is. Maybe some prophet told them that and they just kinda forgot. At any rate, Zeus's act to make the Phaeacians suffer even more felt kind of like he was tutoring Poseidon how to torture people? As if he didn't learn enough from screwing with Odysseus.

My main point though is that while Poseidon caused wreckage because he was personally insulted, Athena wants to screw over the suitors simply because she has taken a liking to Odysseus (and Telemachus, to a smaller extent). From what we know, Zeus is only ok with Gods killing mortals if they have insulted him/her - a possible reason why Athena didn't just smite the suitors then and there. On the other hand, maybe Athena just wanted to give Odysseus and Telemachus the thrill of killing the suitors. In any case, Athena doesn't kill them, but kind of sealed their fate - even when some of suitors felt bad, Athena was like "nope you sit right back down" (this happened in the case of Eurymachus, if I remember correctly). She also makes the suitors laugh when it's most inappropriate, and rage out/show no respect to him when he was dressed up as a beggar. It reminds me of when you put two (male) betta fish in the same bowl - you're not killing them directly, but you're kind of pushing them to kill each other. The way that she tweaks how people think though for some reason reminds me of a simulation with various parameters - Athena runs this simulation and then adjusts the settings until she is satisfied. We can even liken this to tuning a piano - essentially anything where you can adjust something to achieve a certain goal. I don't know if Athena is more interested in seeing how Odysseus and Telemachus kill these suitors or more interested in making them happy.

Also random side note we've like known about the plan to kill the suitors for 4 books already, and after every book you think that someone's gonna start killing people but then the next book turns out to be another cliff hanger? Common Homer you just had to stretch this part out didn't you. -.- Also Penelope's still in the dark like what is she gonna find out after he kills all the suitors or something? She's like wailing and being like "god kill me now I long for him too much" and Odysseus is kinda just like "ehhh imma just come in at just the right time like all heroes do". Then again Odysseus was sleeping when she saying that. I'm ranting again soo yea ummm takeaways from this post I guess Gods like to play "how do I get this kid to kill this other kid?"