Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Individual
Group Discount
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews December 8, 2023 December 1, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan - Group Discount
Qty: 00
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
From Addie’s monologue to the drugstore
That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at.
See Important Quotes Explained, p. 3
The next monologue is Addie’s, although it is not made explicitly clear whether her thoughts are from the coffin, or whether the narrative leaps back in time to when Addie is still living. Addie remembers working as a schoolteacher before her marriage, taking pleasure in whipping her pupils when they misbehaved. Addie then recounts Anse’s terse courtship and their marriage. She says that when she gave birth to their eldest children, Cash and Darl, she felt as if her aloneness had been violated. She had declared Anse dead to her and bemoaned the uselessness of words. She recalls the extramarital passion she shared, and then lost, with Whitfield, the minister. As a result of that brief affair, Addie became disillusioned by that fact that someone supposedly virtuous could engage in such sinful behavior. She eventually gave birth to Jewel, Whitfield’s bastard son. Addie remembers giving birth to Dewey Dell and Vardaman, and describes the births as the final payments in an emotional debt to Anse, after which she was free to die. Addie recalls some of Cora’s remarks about sin and salvation, and dismisses them as empty words.
Whitfield overcomes temptation, and resolves to go to the Bundren household and confess his affair with Addie to Anse before Addie can do so herself. Although the bridge is washed away, Whitfield is able to cross. Upon reaching Tull’s house, he learns that Addie is already dead, and nobody seems to know about the affair. Whitfield decides that this turn of events must be a sign from God. He pays his last respects, and leaves without confessing.
Darl helps lay the semiconscious Cash on top of the coffin. Jewel rides ahead to get Armstid’s team, and the Bundrens ride up to the Armstid household. They carry Cash inside. Armstid offers the house to the Bundrens for the evening, but Anse declines and the Bundrens return to the shed. After initially refusing Armstid’s offer of supper, Anse accepts. Jewel remains behind to attend to the horses.
Over supper, Armstid and Anse discuss the purchase of a new team of mules. Armstid offers Anse the use of his team, but Anse declines. Jewel rides out to find Peabody, but returns with a horse doctor instead, who sets Cash’s broken leg. Cash faints from the pain but does not complain. The next morning, Anse rides off on Jewel’s horse to see about purchasing a team. Armstid watches Vardaman fight off a slew of buzzards that have gathered around Addie’s coffin. Jewel attempts to move the wagon out of the shed, but Darl refuses to help. Late in the day, Anse returns to announce that he has purchased a team. He explains that he has mortgaged his farm equipment, used some money that Cash was saving to buy a gramophone, used some money from his own false teeth fund, and traded away Jewel’s horse. After the first shock wears away, Jewel rides off on his horse. Without the horse, it looks as if the trade will not go through. However, the next morning, a farmhand comes by with a team of mules, saying that the horse was left, unattended, on the land of the man who made the trade with Anse.
Vardaman is traveling with his family in the wagon, and watches a group of buzzards circling above them in the sky.
Moseley, a shopkeeper in the town of Mottson, sees a young woman browsing in his store, and asks her if she needs assistance. Moseley is shocked when the young woman, Dewey Dell, hints that she is in search of an abortion treatment. He flatly refuses to provide her with one, saying that he is a churchgoing man. The young woman insists, and tells Moseley that Lafe told her the drugstore would give her the proper treatment for ten dollars. Moseley still refuses, and advises the young woman to marry her precious Lafe. After the young woman leaves, Moseley hears more about the Bundren family from his assistant. The assistant tells Moseley that Anse had an encounter with the Mottson marshal earlier about the stench of Addie’s eight-day-old corpse. One of the sons was seen buying cement to set his brother’s leg, and then the family left Mottson.
The sudden introduction of Addie’s voice into the narrative is puzzling, and, like Darl’s uncanny ability early in the novel to know what is happening at home even though he is nowhere nearby, Addie’s monologue defies logical explanation. It is, however, quite well placed, and provides us with more perspective on the characters. Addie’s description of Anse as a disheveled bachelor, and of their courtship as brief and matter-of-fact, accounts for his seeming lack of concern for Addie’s death and his various failures as a father. Once we learn that Jewel is an illegitimate son, the mystery behind Addie’s intense attachment to him is solved. For all the value we place on Addie’s commentary, however, she herself has little faith in words, and understands their limits. After giving birth to Cash, she expresses her disillusionment by proclaiming that “[w]ords were no good.” The words “marriage” and “motherhood” have been robbed of their expressiveness, and no longer have anything to do with Addie’s experience. Just as linguistic representations of the abstract concepts of marriage and motherhood have become meaningless for Addie, so have the actual institutions been stripped of their positive qualities.
Addie’s disillusionment with religion points to a deeper preoccupation in the novel with the extent to which religion, sin, and morality determine the actions of the characters. Although these elements factor heavily into the events of the novel, Faulkner is rarely moralistic or judgmental: although some characters know what is right and wrong, they often feel free to disregard that awareness, while other characters, such as Addie, are confused about what is morally correct in the first place.
Addie’s spiritual crisis stands in stark contrast with that of Whitfield, whose spiritual integrity remains untarnished in spite of all his failings. Whitfield’s strong and pronounced resolution to confess all to Anse dissipates as soon as Whitfield learns of Addie’s death, and he lamely justifies himself by claiming that God will accept his intention to confess in place of the actual confession. This weakness, however, does not cost Whitfield any of his esteem, and Faulkner shows a rather undisguised contempt for the clergy in this passage. Perhaps the greatest irony occurs with Cora’s condemnation of Addie for her pride and her statement that not even Whitfield’s prayers can save Addie from her vanity. Soon after the words are out of Cora’s mouth, however, we learn about the affair, and Whitfield’s whole character is unveiled to us as a sham. In fact, Whitfield’s spiritual hypocrisy is similar to Anse’s shameless exploitation of religious faith to justify his own interests. Whitfield, however, retains the admiration of the community, whereas Anse seems to be more or less despised. The contrast between the difficulty that the Bundrens face in crossing the river and Whitfield’s relatively easy passage to apparent absolution strongly hints that divine justice is unfair.
Please wait while we process your payment