A Long Walk in the Opposite Direction

One prominent theme in A Lesson Before Dying that we haven't really explored in class is Grant running away. Grant thinks constantly about leaving the town he lives in and running away with Vivian. Grant has also run away before, like when he went to college and when he left to go to California to see his parents, but he came back every time. One thing we did talk about in class was Grant's adolescent qualities, and his urges to run away, but always come home definitely support that point.

An example of Grant's association with running away occurs when he and Tante Lou are fighting over how to deal with Jefferson. She says, “You ain’t going to run away from this, Grant.” (p. 123) She knows that Grant has run away in the past and would do it again, but she won’t let him because his task is too important.

Another example of Grant’s obsession with running away happens right after Grant learns of Jefferson’s execution date. When Reverend Ambrose wants Grant to go be with Miss Emma, Grant responds:

“I’m not going back down there right now,” I said. “I’m not going back down there and tell her he’s going to die April eighth. Not me.”

“You’d have the strength if you had God,” Reverend Ambrose said.

“That’s where you come in, Reverend,” I said. “I’m going for a walk, a long walk in the opposite direction. Excuse me.” (pgs. 158-9)

This really shows how Grant’s immediate response to anything difficult is to distance himself from it, usually physically. It’s interesting that Grant always seems to leave or stay out for a little while, but will come back eventually.

One of the best examples of Grant’s urges to run away is his conversation with Vivian after the bar fight. Vivian is extremely frustrated with Grant, he says:

I didn’t know what to say. Nothing I would say was going to change anything.

“I’ll leave,” I said.

“Sure, that’s the easy way out--leave.”

Even Vivian knows that Grant only knows how to leave when a situation gets difficult. She calls him out here and Grant responds by getting up to leave. But when he gets to the door:

I could see outside into the darkness, and I didn’t want to go out there. There was nothing outside this house that I cared for. (p. 210)

I think this is a greater metaphor for what happens every time Grant tries to run away. He constantly wants to leave the place that he grew up, but every time he looks at what lies outside of his community, he sees nothing he cares for. This could explain why Grant always returns to his hometown, even though he supposedly can’t stand living there. Therefore in order to truly find his place and be happy in his community, he needs to grow past his fundamental urges to run every time he experiences a difficult situation.

Overall, Grant’s urges to run away not only further the plot, but reveal a significant flaw in his character. While making Jefferson a man is Grant’s main task in his journey, he is going to need to overcome his impulse to run, either through the process of making Jefferson a man or subsequently, in order to truly rise to heroic status.

What Not To Do When You Hate Your Husband

It is almost impossible for a story set in the American South to be told without incorporating religious themes, given that Christianity in particular is so culturally vital in those areas, and As I Lay Dying is no different. Religious aspects pop up all over the book and are necessary to understand plot points, characters, and their significance.

One the first perspectives we get in the novel is Cora’s voice, which is interesting simply because she isn’t part of the Bundren family. One thing she does do well, however, is give her subjective, religiously-influenced, and often incorrect opinions about things. We don’t necessarily know she’s unreliable until later in the novel, but she does introduce her religious views very early on. In particular when she describes how Darl looked in on Addie laying in her bed, saying “He just looked at her, and I felt the bounteous love of the Lord and His mercy.” She likes Darl, and so her first instinct is to compare him to God. Contrarily, later in the novel, in a flashback where Cora speaks to Addie, Cora says “There is your sin. And your punishment too. Jewel is your punishment.” This line his hilariously ironic because Cora is simultaneously so right, but for all the wrong reasons. Jewel is the literal physical manifestation of Addie’s sin, but not because Addie loves him so much, as Cora thinks. Rather, Jewel represents sin because he was conceived through sin, and he is also Addie’s punishment because she has to see him and be reminded every day.

Along the lines of Addie’s views on religion, Addie’s chapter itself is full of religious ideologies. The fact that Addie has an affair with Whitfield, the preacher, has so many religious implications, but one of the most interesting being the way Addie further explicates her views on sin. She explains that, to her, sin is just a word, the same as love, and we can infer that her views on God are similar- that she thinks God is a person or concept with no substance. However she then says “the sin the more utter and terrible since he was the instrument ordained by God who created the sin, to sanctify that sin He had created.” This comment basically negates what she said earlier about how sin and God weren’t really real things (but hey, who said this book had to make sense). She also goes on to say “I would think of him as dressed in sin. I would think of him as thinking of me as dressed also in sin, he the more beautiful since the garment which he had exchanged for sin was sanctified.” Basically Addie says she finds him attractive because they’re sinning, and also because they’re double sinning because he’s a priest, which is very weird but also not that weird. She ends her chapter by saying (referring to Cora) “She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.” To me, at least, I thought this revelation was pretty profound. In particular “sin is just a matter of words” struck me, because it emphasizes that, to Addie, sin is not a word, but both an action (her affair) and a person (Jewel). It also shows that Addie isn’t particularly penitent about her actions, and either doesn’t believe in salvation or doesn’t think it will ever be granted to her.

Overall religious themes are present in many scenes throughout the book, much more than I can touch on in a single blog post. Many of the characters are motivated by what they perceive to be a higher power and their own philosophies which are affected by their religious views. The novel functions primarily because of a few strings that connect all of the events, and I think understanding the religious aspects of the story is crucial for gaining a deeper understanding of the novel.