Cash
Cash remembers Anse going back to the house to return
the spades and remaining inside for a long time. That night, a sheepish
Anse goes into town to attend to some unnamed business. The next
morning, as the family prepares to leave Jefferson, Anse goes out,
telling his children to meet him later. They wait for him on a corner,
eating bananas. Eventually Anse arrives, wearing a new set of false
teeth and escorting a stern-looking woman who carries a gramophone. Looking
both sheepish and proud, Anse introduces all of his children to
the woman, and tells them all to “[m]eet Mrs. Bundren.”
“It’s Cash and Jewel and Vardaman and
Dewey Dell,” pa says, kind of hangdog and proud too, with his teeth and
all, even if he wouldn’t look at us. “Meet Mrs Bundren,” he says.
See Important Quotations Explained
Analysis
In the novel’s final chapters, Cash emerges as the most
objective and rational member of the family, and is consequently
the most obvious choice to inherit the role of narrator from the
ranting Darl. Up to this point, Cash has been the least vocal of
the Bundrens, giving him a sort of neutrality in the politics of
the family. This neutrality allows him to tell the final episode
of the story with an impartial eye that is rare in this conflicted,
self-loathing family. Cash’s reflections on Darl’s insanity accurately
articulate the novel’s skepticism about absolute moral claims. Although
Cash makes no apology for the family’s decision to commit Darl to
a mental institution, he goes on to say that madness “aint so much
what a fellow does” as how “the majority of folks is looking at
him when he does it.” This intellectually complex statement acknowledges
the role that society plays in determining people’s fates and interpretations
of themselves. Cash’s use of the past tense also indicates his strong
rationality, as though he has fully thought out the actions he describes.
We have seen similar perspectives from characters outside the Bundren
family, suggesting that Cash has escaped his family’s dysfunction
and has arrived at some degree of normalcy.
In Darl’s final narrative, the degeneration of the voice
of a once insightful and rational man into that of an incomprehensible
schizophrenic is shown by his use of wildly incongruous pronouns
and points of view. Darl speaks of himself sometimes as “I” and
sometimes as “Darl,” indicating that he sees his inner, private
self as an identity separate from his outer, social self. Similarly,
his comment toward the end of his monologue that “Darl is our brother”
indicates that he is assuming the perspective of his siblings. Through
this insane raving, we can see traces of the old Darl, who earlier
senses his siblings’ deepest secrets. While Darl earlier has the
uncanny ability to get inside others’ heads, he is now somewhat
locked out of his own head.
The family members’ reactions to Darl’s incarceration
seem far less intense than their reactions to Addie’s death, and
they quickly return to their usual preoccupations following Darl’s
removal. Vardaman mentions Darl and Addie repeatedly in his final
monologue, but he is also enraptured by the buzzards and by a toy
train he sees in town. Cash seems resigned to Darl’s being put in
an asylum, and Dewey Dell neglects to mention Darl at all. Anse
seems to bear no scars, nor to have learned any lessons, from the
tribulations of his journey. Anse’s stay in Jefferson is brief,
but culminates in a second marriage that happens so quickly it is
almost comic. Anse embodies the contrast between the macabre and
the mirthful, between high seriousness and cheap farce, and his
status is emblematic of the contradictions that permeate the narrative.
These contradictions underscore the novel’s key idea that there
is no absolute perception of reality, and that one person’s pain
is another’s comedy. The differing reactions to Darl’s removal serve
as a last reminder that even the most cataclysmic events do not
set off a universal reaction, and that events are shaped entirely
by the perspective and experience of the person witnessing them.
