As I Lay Dying - Dewey Dell

Résumé du document

Il s'agit d'un commentaire littéraire sur la section 14 dédiée au personnage féminin: Dewey Dell. Dans cette analyse j'ai cherché à montré l'ambivalence de l'esprit maternel à travers l'interaction entre le sociolecte, l'idiolecte et le dialecte de Dewey Dell. Ainsi, j'ai développé mon analyse en me focalisant dans un premier temps sur cet esprit maternel qu'elle incarne. Ensuite, sur le fait que cet esprit est limité. Enfin, je me suis consacrée au fait que Dewey Dell est confrontée à un choix confrontant son intérêt personnel et son devoir héroique.

Extraits

[...] Moreover, Dewey Dell seems to have a particular way of describing the body. Indeed, it seems to move from one extreme to another. She first sees the body as a horrible thing, a view that is illustrated with the metaphor of guts: l.2.3: tub of guts", repeated several times in the opening paragraph. Then, she emerges with a strangely erotic and sensual side. It is brought to light with bilabials and alveolars within a polyptoton, a personification and a hyperbole: l.68 to 70: "[The cow] nuzzles at me, snuffing, blowing her breath in a sweet, hot blast, through my dress, against my hot nakedness, moaning", with an oxymoron: l.134.135: "[the dead air] lies dead and warm upon me, touching me naked through my clothes". [...]

[...] The plot takes place in Yoknapatawpha in Mississippi New York in the 20th century and follows the death of a mother Annie Bundren and the long journey of transporting her body by her husband, Anse Bundren and her five children, Cash, Darl, Jewel, Dewey Dell and Vardaman, to her hometown, Jefferson. The extract under study closely follows Dewey Dell's internal focalization. In this excerpt, we learn of her concern about the sexual relationship she had with a farmer named Lafe, which resulted in a pregnancy. [...]

[...] The reliability of the character of Dewey Dell is questionable. Indeed, the fact that she moves from one subject to another in section 14 shows that she is psychologically disturbed. Indeed, at the beginning of section 14, Dewey Dell describes how she is cooking, then mentions her mother's death, saying incoherent things, and then goes back to describing how she cooks. It is highlighted with the colloquial register of the language of Dewey Dell relating to her idiolect with a lot of skaz relating to her sociolect: light the kitchen lamp. [...]

[...] As for is she talking of Peabody who could help her abort. Then, according to Dewey Dell's stream of consciousness, Dewey Dell seems to see death all around her as a macabre and morbid atmosphere pervades the setting. It is put forward in section 14 with the lexical field of death within an oxymoron: l.85"dead walking", within a chiasmus: l.85 to 88: feel the darkness rushing past my breast, past the cow; I begin to rush upon the darkness but the cow stops me and the darkness rushes on upon the sweet blast of her moaning breath", within a personification: l.127.128: "Then the dead, hot, pale air breathes on my face again.", l.134.135: "It lies dead and warm upon me, touching me naked through my clothes.", within an isocolon: l.133.134: "The dead air shapes the dead earth in the dead darkness, further away than seeing shapes the dead earth.". [...]

[...] Whether I can or not. I dont know whether I can cry or not. I dont know whether I have tried to or not.". Finally, Dewey Dell is also seen as a selfish person in the eyes of her family members. It is the case for Darl for example since he thinks that she only wants to go to the city to have an abortion and does not care about her dying mother. It is brought to light with an Epiphora and with the sociolect of the Bundren family in section 10: l.10 to 18: said to Dewey Dell: "You want her to die so you can get to town: is that She wouldn't say what we both knew. [...]