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 to me: This will be graded! Due: Wed 2/26

Decoding References – Dewey DellDecoding 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 - AddieDecoding 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