Aim: What kind of spectacle to the Bundren’s

create in the town of Mottson?

Do Now: Philosophical Dualism: There are two basic kinds of substance in existence. There are minds as well as bodies, mental properties as well as physical

properties.Contemplate: Is this type of dualism in a being defined

the same way for men and women?HW: Read to p. 225.

Assignment

As I Lay Dying and the Depiction of Womanhood. Both Addie and Dewey Dell struggle with the concept of

motherhood. Both see it as an unwelcome disturbance to their lives, a violation. With regard to the theme of of Being and Identity being depicted in the novel, how do we explain the feelings these Bundren women have toward their offspring?

Provide your theory in at least 3 well-developed paragraphs. Provide a thesis statement at the beginning and develop your idea with at least 2 specific examples from the text. You may type this and email to me: nmiletic@schools.nyc.gov

This will be graded!

Due: Wed 2/26

Decoding References – Dewey Dell

“Because I said will I or wont I when the sack was half full because I said if the sack is full when we get to the woods it wont be me. I said if it don’t mean for me to do it the sack will not be full and I will turn up the next row but is the sack I full, I cannot help it. It will be that I had to do it all the time and I cannot help it.” 27

“And that’s why I can talk to him with knowing and hating because he knows.” 27

“I said You dont know what worry is. I dont know what it is. I dont know whether I am worrying or not. Whether I can or not. I dont know whether I can cry or not. I dont know whether I have tried to or not. I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.” 64

“That’s what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.” 121

Decoding References - Addie “And when I knew that I had Cash, I knew that living was terrible and

that this was the answer to it.” 171 “When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone

who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn’t care whether there was a word for it or not.” 171

“I would think: The shape of my body where I used to be a virgin is in the shape of a and I couldn’t think Anse, couldn’t remember Anse.” 171

“She [Cora] would tell me what I owed to my children and to Anse and to God. I gave Anse the children. I did not ask for them. I did not even ask him for what he could given me: not Anse. That was my durty to him, to not ask that and that duty I fulfilled. I would be I; I would let him be the shape and the echo of his word.” 172

“My children were of me alone, of the wild blood boiling along the earth, of me and of all that lived; of none and of all. Then I found that I had Jewel. When I waked to remember to discover it, he was two months gone.” 173

“My father said that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead. I knew at last what he meant and that he could not have known what he meant himself, because a man cannot know anything about cleaning up the house afterward.” 175-6