Anse's Teeth

In As I Lay Dying, story is told by multiple narrators. I’ve read books before that had maybe 2-3 narrators that switched per chapter, but in As I Lay Dying there are 15 different narrators throughout the entire novel. Even though this gets confusing at times, I think it’s really a refreshing and stark difference from the Odyssey, where we see basically one narrator and their one opinion.

But with all of this extra information, it’s hard for me to come up with a solid opinion about any of the characters.

For Anse this is especially the case, because his motives are not completely clear to me. In class we talked about the (tender) moment when Anse goes to Addie right after she dies, and even though he’s super awkward, he’s still trying to convey some emotion. And in a sense he’s reaching out to her which we didn’t see when she was alive. But something that ruins this moment, is right afterwards Anse goes: “Now I can get them teeth” (52). This made me think that Addie’s death wasn’t even as important as getting his teeth.

At first, I thought this was super disappointing, but in last night's reading there was another reference to those great teeth that Anse was looking forward to: “But now I can get them teeth. That will be comfort. It will” (111). So this sort of made me question whether I’d jumped to conclusions on Anse. In that quote, Anse seems to be looking to new teeth as a comfort because his wife died. All of the Bundren family seems to be grieving in different ways, whether it be immersing yourself in work as Cash did, or convincing yourself that your mother was a fish, as Vardaman did. To me, it seems like (at this current moment) that getting new teeth is almost like Anse’s way of grieving.

There are definitely other ways to interpret this and since we don’t really know the Anse before Addie’s illness, it’s kind of hard to judge, but at the moment with all of this information we are given, this is sort of my take on Anse’s teeth issue.

Poker Face

When Odysseus went back to Ithaca he manages to withhold his emotions to such an extreme level. After 20 years of not seeing his home and family, he manages to put off that intense emotion that goes with the classic homecoming story.

Something that struck me, was that throughout the rest of the Odyssey, Odysseus is seen showing tons of emotion. He’s constantly crying: when he hears the bard telling his story at the feast with the Phaeacians or even when we first meet Odysseus, weeping on Calypso’s island. So we can see from the majority of the books that Odysseus is very in tune with his emotions and he’s obviously been through a lot, that hiding those emotions gets pretty hard.

But when Odysseus enters Ithaca, he suddenly changes. The most emotion he really shows is when he sheds a tear when he is reunited with his loyal dog, Argos. And even that, which, as we talked about in class, was a very iconic homecoming moment, Odysseus couldn’t really savor. At this point I realized that I probably didn’t give Odysseus enough credit on his mental strength. In general, I was sort of disappointed with Odysseus. Before reading the Odyssey, I thought Odysseus was going to be the stereotypical hero, with almost no faults. But as we progressed through the books, my opinion of him has slowly gone down.

But this huge contrast of his emotional crying during his wanderings to his stoic homecoming, made me rethink my opinion of him. To me this first took away from his humanity. Even when he first learned about being in Ithaca, I was surprised that he was able to keep such a cool face. Maybe it was the fact that it's been so long, and he couldn't believe that he was finally home, but I just couldn't believe it. Granted, when Odysseus was reunited with Telemachus, he was crying plenty. But as his strategic plan of taking his home back continued, I realized that his mental strength must've been insanely strong if he was able to walk into his home, 20 years later, able to suppress all that excitement. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still think that Odysseus is not morally just and has plenty of faults. But his extreme strengths, physically and emotionally,  is notable.

Just Listen

In The Memory of Running, Smithy comes off as the least hero-y hero there is. And at the start of reading this, I had no idea how Smithy would fit into the hero mold. The thing that really bothered me the most (at first) was how passive he was ALL the time. Sometimes while reading, I’d just want to yell at the people he interacted with because of how much they misunderstood him or mistreated him. I thought of this while writing my essay, where I realized that what made Smithy into a hero was his passivity. And this passivity is what set him apart from all the other hero’s we know of.

Something I found really interesting was that there is almost no way that Smithy would’ve met all the different kinds of people he did and heard all of his stories if he’d been any more aggressive. He managed to connect with people on a different level, and learn about their pains and suffering, all because of one thing. He listened.

My favorite part was when he met the old artist lady in Washington Park in New York. First of all, she (what seemed to me like a rude thing to say) addressed Smithy as “fat boy.” Even on Smithy’s behalf, I immediately felt offended. You don’t just call a stranger by the name of “fat boy.” But Smithy didn’t seem to mind, and even complimented her work immediately after she said that. She then tells him the heartbreaking and captivating stories about her life, and he gets to learn so much about a stranger in New York. I also noticed that in the majority of their interaction, even though Smithy is the main character and is narrating the entire novel, the dialogue is almost entirely from the artist.

Now I’m not sure if this is just something this lady does all the time, but Smithy seems to have this quality about him that makes people open up to him in the most intimate ways possible. This is seen in almost every single meaningful interaction he has in the novel. And that’s something I’m truly impressed by. He gets to learn about the dark secrets in these people's lives, and he learns that it’s not just his life that has its complications.