Darl vs. Bundrens (and Sanity)

Narrating more than a third of the chapters and almost half the book, readers see more of Darl than any character. In the recent chapters which we have read, Darl seems to have changed a lot (although, he was already quite different than the rest of the characters). Unlike any of the other characters in the book, Darl has this view upon things - he is able to view the world through a different lense- almost as if he is like a third person narrator. This starts in the first chapter itself, when Darl can see where Jewel is walking even though he is not looking at him. But after the incident where he burnt the barn, my thoughts were a little distorted. Sure, Darl had led most of this journey for us. But now, I wasn’t so sure about many of the things he was saying. Was he accurate? Or was he just toying with us? And we see Darl’s insanity growing as the book goes on: when Darl narrates, once, he talks about how his family members are like caged animals!

The barn scene is quite intense in its own rights too. Darl puts a blazing fire in the barn, which not only contains almost everything of value to the Bundren family (and to Gillespie, no doubt) including his dead mother’s coffin. Initially (when the family plans to send him to an insane institution), the family makes excuses such as how they need to send Darl otherwise Gillespie will sue them...But the part I love most about this is that Cash narrates this incident. Cash is a simplistic and straightforward narrator, so he conveys the point quickly and accurately (oh, and I can trust Cash, because he is really hardworking, and we haven’t seen him wanting to do any harm to the family). Here, he is trying to reason it all out: “Sometimes I ain’t sho who’s got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he ain't. Sometimes I think it ain't none of us pure crazy and ain't none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it. […] That’s how I reckon a man is crazy. That’s how he can’t see eye to eye with other folks. And I reckon they ain't nothing else to do with him but what the most folks says is right.” Cash’s narration is really important here because it conveys the point that whether someone is insane or not depends a whole lot on each person’s viewpoint. If I think about it, I thought that Jewel was the crazy one for a while (sleeping while he’s suppose to be doing work, taunted by Darl about his father, working somewhere else where he doesn’t sleep for some reason instead of perfecting his own farm, his mother preferring him over the others). I guess that Darl being taken over to the “mental institution” is a mockery to much of the Bundren family, if not all. Each, in their own ways, is insane (Anse can’t sweat, Dewey Dell has her problem, Cash doesn’t complain and just bears the pain which screws him up in the end, Jewel is obsessed with the horse).

Wednesday, October 15