Heaven vs. Earth

In A Lesson Before Dying, religion becomes a huge issue as the plot develops, as Miss Emma and Reverend Ambrose are desperately trying to save Jefferson's soul as much as they want him to become a man. Grant and Rev. Ambrose are supposed to work together to help Jefferson in both a spiritual and worldly sense. However, Grant seems to feel some sense of competition with Reverend Ambrose. He recognizes that his goal of making Jefferson a man and Rev. Ambrose's goal of saving Jefferson's soul are often at odds. This bitterness between Grant and Rev. Ambrose is exacerbated by the fact that Grant is hardly religious and wants nothing to do with religion, which is a point of contention between Grant and Ms. Emma, Tante Lou, and Rev. Ambrose.

However, I started to see some irony in this sort of rivalry between Grant and Rev. Ambrose, as I realized that there are some really strong parallels between what Grant is asking Jefferson to do and Jesus. This became glaringly obvious to me in chapter 28, when Grant and Jefferson are discussing religion. The most striking moment to me was:

"'Who make people kill people, Mr. Wiggins?'
'They killed His Son, Jefferson.'
'And He never said a mumbling word.'
'That's what they say.'
'That's how I want to go Mr. Wiggins. Not a mumbling word (p. 223).'"

Neither Jefferson (as far as we know) nor Jesus were criminals, but they were both put to death anyway. Jesus's life could have seemed futile, just like Jefferson's, as they both knew that they were going to be killed. Jesus went to his death without any protests, letting people's ridiculing comments roll off his back, which also exemplifies Grant's description of a hero in the day room ("(a hero) is above other men (...) He would do anything for people he loves, because he knows it would make their lives better (p. 191)"). He even asks God to forgive the people killing him, because they don't know what they are doing. The idea that "they don't know what they are doing" reminds me a bit of the myth, or, in Grant's words, "an old lie that people believe in," that he describes to Jefferson in the day room about how white people believe that they are better than black people.

What's really interesting to me, though is how Jefferson looks up to and wants to be like Jesus the man, not Jesus the spiritual figure. Jesus's story is just as much about heaven as it is about earth, and to Christians, Jesus is God and human, but Jefferson and Grant only seem to be concerned with Jesus as a human at the moment. Grant and Jefferson are not even sure if they believe in heaven, though Grant believes in God. We find out pretty early on in the book that Miss Emma wants Reverend Ambrose and Grant to work together, which Grant seems to think is not going to work, but as the plot has developed, it seems to me that Grant and Rev. Ambrose's tasks are not as mutually exclusive as they seem.

A Dark Comedy

One of the essential theme of As I Lay Dying and that sets the tone of the story is the constant feeling that the characters are lonely and out-of-place. I first thought about this when we saw the country vs. town motif, as the Bundrens stick out like a sore thumb when they go into town. Just looking at Moseley's description of the family as they are in Mottson shows how they must seem like bizarre country folks coming on a trip to the big city: 

"It must have been like a piece of rotten cheese coming into an ant-hill, in that ramshackle wagon that Albert said folks were scared would fall into pieces before they could get it to town, with that homemade box and another fellow with a broken leg lying on a quilt on top of it, and the father and a little boy on the seat and the marshal trying to make them get out of town."

As I looked back though, it became more clear that the Bundrens weren't just country folks who were out of place in town, they are out of place even when they are at home in the country, judging by the way Tull, Cora, Samson, Armstid, and their wives talk about them. They don't understand Anse's determination to get to Jefferson (Rachel and Lula see it as an "outrage"), and their outside perspectives reveal to us how ridiculous the Bundrens are.

If I was only presented with these outside views of the Bundren family, I would be quick to say that the tone of the book is comedic, and it is poking fun at this eccentric, out-of-place family. However, the majority of the book is narrated by members of the Bundren family, which gives us their inside perspectives. Getting to know them individually reveals how they each have a reason to be isolated even within their own family, which makes them seem not just quirky and out-of-place, but alone, putting a darker spin on the tone of the story: As we get to know the family from the inside, we find out that Dewey Dell is the lone female, pregnant, and has no one to talk to. Vardaman is the youngest child by almost 10 years, disturbed by his mother's death, and is desperately in need of a parental figure to guide him, but no one fills that role for him. Jewel has a different father than all of the other children, and Darl has some form of omniscient powers/may be crazy. Even Cash seems isolated in a way, as he goes through a great amount of pain, but doesn't bother anyone with it.

Having both internal and external views of the Bundrens highlights the much-discussed issue in class: are the members of the Bundren family comically out of place in their surroundings or hopelessly alone even in the midst of their own family? Is this the story of an eccentric family making a spectacle while trying to bury their mother or a desperate every-man-for-himself struggle to solve individual problems? I honestly don't know. My best reasoning is that Faulkner juxtapositioned these many different perspectives to create a dark yet comedic tone for the book. My reaction while reading most of this story was “I feel bad laughing” because the characters were truly absurd, but the narrative structure of the book helped me get inside their heads so it was evident how alone they all were.