As I Lay Dying (final)

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Two, narrated by Darl Summary

• Jewel rides to Armstid’s farm and returns with Armstid’s team of mules.
• Cash, still half-unconscious, is placed on top of Addie’s coffin. (He was kicked in the stomach by Jewel’s horse after he was pulled out of the water.) He tries to make sure his tools are nearby (everyone has a security blanket).
• The Bundrens travel to Armstid’s place for food and shelter for the night.
• Jewel hangs back to take care of his horse while the others go in for dinner.

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Three, narrated by Armstid Summary

• At dinner, Anse refuses to use Armstid’s team of mules – he would rather buy a new team of his own.
• Meantime, Jewel goes to get Peabody to fix Cash’s leg. All he can find is a horse doctor, who does what he can. Cash elects to pass out rather than complain.
• Anse rides Jewel’s horse over to Snipe’s to find a team of mules to buy.
• Vardaman chases the buzzards around.
• When Anse returns and announces that he mortgaged all his stuff to buy a new team, Darl knows that he must have traded away something more than his junky farm equipment.
• As it turns out, Darl is right. Anse used the eight dollars that Cash had been saving up to buy a graphophone. He also used some money from his own personal "Let’s get me some teeth!" fund.
• Oh, and he also traded away Jewel’s horse.
• Jewel takes his horse and rides off into the horizon.
• Anse claims that his family will go with their own team, again refusing Armstid’s offer to lend his own mules. Cash is placed on a quilt on top of Addie’s coffin.
• The next morning, Snopes brings the mules over and explains that Jewel’s horse was left on his property (meaning the trade went through.) Jewel is nowhere to be seen.
• Armstid notes that there’s something about Anse that makes other men want to help him.

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Four, narrated by Vardaman Summary

• The family travels towards Mottson. Anse figures they’ll need to buy Cash medicine, and Darl says they’d better sell Dewey Dell’s cakes in Mottson before they go bad.
• Jewel still hasn’t shown up.
• Cash is awake and in pain. Darl tries to adjust the rope to make it better for him.
• Vardaman and Darl count the number of buzzards flying above them.
• As they ascend a hill, Darl, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell walk while Anse drives the weak team of mules.

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Five, narrated by Moseley Summary

• The family arrives in Mottson.
• Dewey Dell enters a drugstore and indirectly asks for the druggist, Moseley, to give her something to abort her two-month-old baby. She offers him the ten dollars Lafe gave her.
• Moseley refuses to do so, advising Dewey Dell to take the ten dollars and marry Lafe.
• One of the boys goes in a hardware store to buy cement for Cash’s leg.
• The marshal says cement will kill Cash, a Vardaman Bundren ld corpse. In fact, all the townspeople are offended and disturbed by the Bundrens and their traveling corpse party.
• Anse defends his family by bombarding the citizens with all of the obstacles they’ve encountered thus far.

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Six, narrated by Darl Summary

• The family stops at a house to ask for water, since Cash is on the edge of death.
• Darl mixes cement for Cash’s leg with powder, water, and some sand that Vardaman collects.
• They pour the cement over Cash’s leg to create a cast.
• Jewel returns, says nothing, and gets into the wagon.
• Anse sees a hill ahead of them, so he has them all get out and walk.

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Seven, narrated by Vardaman Summary

• Dewey Dell, Jewel, Darl, and Vardaman walk up the hill. Anse and Cash are in the wagon.
• Vardaman counts five buzzards and asks Darl where they (the buzzards) go at night. He resolves to watch and find out for himself.

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Eight, narrated by Darl Summary

• The Bundrens have stopped to rest at a farm owned by a man named Gillespie.
• Darl asks Jewel who his father was. Jewel curses him and doesn’t answer.
• Cash starts sweating. He’s in pain because, in the heat, his leg is swelling against the concrete. They pour water on his leg, he thanks them, and everyone tries to sleep.

As I Lay Dying Section Forty-Nine, narrated by Vardaman Summary

• In the middle of the night, Darl and Vardaman go over to Addie’s coffin, which they’ve placed under an apple tree.
• Darl has Vardaman put his ear to the coffin to see what their mother is saying.
• Vardaman says Addie is asking God to help her.
• They go back to check up on Cash, who has them pour more water on his leg.
• Anse, Jewel, and Darl all move the coffin into the barn for the night.
• Later that night, Vardaman gets up to go see where the buzzards are after dark.
• He then sees "something," namely Darl setting fire to the Gillespie barn. Dewey Dell later tells him not to reveal what he saw to anyone.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty, narrated by Darl Summary

• The Gillespie barn is on fire. Everyone runs out of the house.
• Jewel rushes in to save the horses and cows from the burning barn. He then does the same thing to save his mother’s coffin.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-One, narrated by Vardaman Summary

• The cement around Cash’s leg is blackened. Anse tries to break the cast off.
• Gillespie wonders why they ever put cement on it without greasing it up first. Anse claims he had the boy’s best interest at heart.
• Darl is nowhere to be found until Vardaman sees him lying on Addie’s coffin, crying.
• Dewey Dell applies a butter ointment onto Jewel’s burnt back.
• Darl continues to cry over Addie’s coffin while Vardaman tries to console him.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Two, narrated by Darl Summary

• The family is almost to Jefferson. Anse concludes that once they get to town, they’ll need to take Cash to a doctor right away.
• Anse adds that they ought to have done what Armstid and Gillespie recommended and called in to have the burial plot dug ahead of time. But he feels someone in the family should do the digging. Jewel states that anyone can dig a hole.
• Out of the blue, Dewey Dell runs for the bushes on the side of the road. She comes back wearing her Sunday dress, which Anse criticizes her for bringing.
• As the Bundrens approach town, they pass by three people on the road. Two of them comment on the stench of the box, and Jewel turns to the third person and aims to punch him. He insults the man, and the pedestrian pulls out a knife. Darl orders that Jewel take back what he said, and this avoids a physical fight.
• Instead of getting back into the wagon, Jewel sits on the perimeter, the better for pouting.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Three, narrated by Cash Summary

• Darl is being sent to a mental institution in Jackson. The Bundrens are worried that if they don’t, Gillespie will sue him for burning down his barn.
• Jewel wants to tie Darl up so he can’t set fire to anything else, but Cash says they should wait until Addie is buried to do so.
• Anse laments his own rotten luck. Again.
• Cash philosophizes that there is no such thing as "crazy" or "sane," and that it all depends on who’s looking at you when you act and what they think. (This is important stuff, Shmooper.)
• He understands Jewel’s anger, but he thinks that Darl was trying to burn up the value of Jewel's horse in the barn, to make up for the fact that it was traded away.
• He also thinks it was God’s plan to have Addie’s body taken in an easy, natural way. He wonders if Jewel worked against God’s plan when he fought so hard to pull the coffin from the river.
• Still, nothing justifies Darl’s burning down Gillespie’s barn. He muses that this must be how "crazy" is defined – by acting in a way that other men can’t see eye to eye with.
• As the family makes their way into town, Darl proposes that they take Cash to the doctor before burying Addie. But Cash says he can wait until after.
• Pa realizes they don’t have a spade to dig the hole with. Jewel wants to spend the money to buy one, but Pa says that he will borrow it from a citizen in town.
• The boys wait in front of a house while Pa goes in to get a spade. Cash refers to it as "Mrs. Bundren’s house," which will make sense by the end of the novel. From inside the house he can hear music playing from a graphophone –just like the one he would have bought with the money that Anse took to buy the replacement team of mules.
• Anse comes back from the house with two spades. They drive away from the house, but he looks back it. In the window Cash can see a woman’s face.
• After Addie is buried, some men come to take Darl away to the institution. A fight breaks out when he resists apprehension. Jewel is angry, yelling for them to kill Darl. Darl looks up at Cash and says, "I thought you would have told me." Then he begins laughing maniacally.
• Cash tells his brother that it will be better for him to go. Darl just keeps laughing.
• Cash feels conflicted, but he maintains his earlier conviction that nothing justifies burning down a barn, a man’s livelihood.
• But then he again doubts himself, reiterating that no man has a right to deem an action sane or crazy.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Four, narrated by Peabody Summary

• Peabody tries to remove the cement from Cash’s leg and takes with it 60-some square inches of skin.
• He marvels when Cash calmly accepts the situation, even the news that he might not be able to walk again.
• By now, Darl has been handcuffed and arrested.
• Peabody says they ought to have buried Anse while they were burying Addie, on account of how poorly he treats his children (like setting his son’s leg in cement).

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Five, narrated by MacGowan Summary

• MacGowan is a clerk at a pharmacy. He sees Dewey Dell enter, finds her attractive, and pretends to be the doctor.
• Dewey Dell asks him, again indirectly, about getting an abortion. MacGowan decides to take advantage of the situation. While nothing is explicit, it seems he’s asking her to have sex with him as payment, in addition to the ten dollars she brought from Lafe.
• Dewey Dell seems to agree, implicitly. McGowan gives her turpentine and asks her to return at 10pm for the rest of the remedy.
• Dewey Dell returns at 10pm with Vardaman, whom she leaves waiting on the curb outside. MacGowan gives her capsules he has filled with talcum powder and leads her down to the basement.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Six, narrated by Vardaman Summary

• Vardaman waits outside while Dewey Dell is in the pharmacy.
• He keeps thinking about Darl, his brother, who is going to Jackson because he is crazy.
• Vardaman notices a cow across the street. No one else is out at night.
• Vardaman thinks about the train set in the window they passed.
• After a long time, Dewey Dell comes out, cursing the "doctor" and saying that she knows it won’t work.
• Vardaman wants to know what won’t work, but Dewey Dell just answers that they should go back to their hotel.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Seven, narrated by Darl Summary

• Darl talks in the third person about himself, wondering why Darl keeps laughing.
• As he is being taken away to the insane asylum, he looks back and sees his family by the wagon. Dewey Dell, Cash, and Vardaman are eating bananas.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Eight, narrated by Dewey Dell Summary

• Anse finds the ten dollars that Dewey Dell was going to use for an abortion.
• He demands to know where she got the money from. Dewey Dell denies that it is hers, saying it belongs to Cora and that she got it by selling Cora’s cakes in town.
• Anse guilt trips Dewey Dell. He says that he does so much for her and doesn’t expect anything in return, and now she won’t even lend him ten dollars.
• Dewey Dell insists over and over that it is not hers and she doesn’t have the right to give it away.
• Anse takes the money from Dewey Dell.

As I Lay Dying Section Fifty-Nine, narrated by Cash Summary

• Anse is gone a long time while supposedly returning the shovels. He insisted that he had to be the one to bring them back.
• While waiting outside, Cash remembers the graphophone they heard earlier. He thinks music is just about the greatest thing in the world. He thinks he could have bought one with five dollars, except that Anse took the money for the replacement mules.
• After he comes back, Anse goes into the barber’s to get a shave. Cash notices that he’s all prettied up when he comes back.
• The next morning, Anse asks Cash if he has any more money. Cash says no, and then says that if they need anything else, they should go to Peabody. Anse says no, they don’t need anything else.
• Cash waits in the wagon with Jewel, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell, who are eating bananas.
• Finally, they see Anse approaching with the woman he borrowed the spades from. Jewel notices that he finally got the teeth he’s been talking about.
• The woman in question is "duck-shaped," dressed-up, and carrying a little graphophone. Cash momentarily wishes that Darl were around so that he could listen to the music, too, but concludes that "this world is not his world; this life his life."
• Pa introduces all of his children to the new Mrs. Bundren.