Introverts make up about 33% to 50% of the population in the United States (Goudreau). In the novel, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, Dewey Dell may be considered introverted, or a person who does not communicate their emotions well with others. However, each member of the Bundren family has something to hide, therefore Dewey Dell is not as introverted as the audience may think. Dewey Dell makes a preposterous decision when she decides to hide her pregnancy from her family.
Dewey Dell, a character familiar with distrust in her backwards family, is also quick to betray her kin; this displays that secrets and withholding inner thoughts can cause one to act irrationally. With Dewey Dell experiencing treachery throughout the novel, it can be said that betrayal is common amongst the Bundren family. Many characters in the novel commit acts of betrayal, which could have potentially been a cause of Dewey Dell’s similar actions. Anse, for example, is a character who betrays many throughout the novel, including Dewey Dell. Anse betrays the whole family more importantly by not leading them on their journey to Jefferson.
When there is an obstacle they face along the way, he just sits back and watches everyone, not saying a word. Darl recounts Anse when they face one of many obstacles, “Pa has come down to the shore, watching us” (Faulkner 159). He does not assist anyone in any way. Jewel, and Tull are risking their lives going back in the water to retrieve Cash’s tools, and he is acting like nothing is happening. This shows how unfather-like he is, and how he thinks he is entitled to do nothing since he is the father, and should be leading, but is actually being a dreadful father.
With all his imperfections as a father, his children see him as an unloyal person, and show no respect for him anymore. On top of Dewey Dell’s father betraying the family, Addie, her mother, is also at fault for committing acts of betrayal. Addie, for example, is a character who betrays her other kids in the novel, including Dewey Dell. Addie betrays the whole family by making her other children do Jewel’s work when he is “sick”. They later find out that Jewel is so tired all the time because he would leave at night and go work for Mr. Quick in order to buy his new horse, not for the reasons they thought.
Addie, in trying to help relieve Jewel a little bit, makes Dewey Dell and Vardaman do his work for him. Darl recounts Addie at this time: “It was ma that got Dewey Dell to do his milking… and the other jobs around the house that Jewel had been doing before supper she found some way for Dewey Dell and Vardaman to do them” (Faulkner 130). Addie favors Jewel, which causes her to assign the rest of the children his chores. She would even hide food for him. She treats Jewel as superior to the rest of the children, and it is very evident.
She preaches to her children that they should always be honest, and she does just the opposite. She avoids telling Anse that she is doing all this, so that she does not get Jewel in trouble for not doing his chores. With all of this betrayal happening around Dewey Dell, it is in her nature to do as the rest of her family is. A brain research demonstrates that, “There are special cells called mirror neurons. When we watch someone do something, our mirror neurons become active in the brain as if we ourselves were engaging in the same behavior we are observing” (Kazdin).
By viewing what is happening around Dewey Dell, she can later take on the same mannerisms as her parents did, just by watching and taking it all in. By this, she learns that it is okay to betray her family since her parents, the people that are supposed to be her role models, are. This gives her the green light for betraying her own brother, Darl, and for not feeling heartache, and sorrow for him. She sees that it is common throughout her family to betray someone close to you, and she does just that. Being a part of such a secluded family, it is in Dewey Dell’s ature to betray others out of selfishness. Most of her family going to Jefferson to bury their mother are going there for selfish reasons. Cash is going for the graphophone, and Anse is going for his new teeth. Most importantly though, Dewey Dell is going for her medicine to get an abortion. She does this out of selfish motives, so that she does not have to take responsibility and fess up to her family that she even has this baby at all. The only other person that knows about her pregnancy, besides herself and Lafe, is Darl.
Darl knows this,”… without the words… ” (Faulkner 27). He has this telepathic sense, and superior observation skill, in which he deciphers what happened with Dewey Dell in the barn with Lafe. Darl describes Dewey Dell in this manner: “Dewey Dell’s wet dress shapes for the dead eyes of three blind men… ” (Faulkner 164). Everyone else is oblivious to Dewey Dell being pregnant, only Darl can see from his heightened observations, this is in Dewey Dell’s favor because she has more time to get the medicine without anybody becoming suspicious.
Since this discovery that Darl has found about Dewey Dell, she has been paranoid that he is going to spill her big secret to the family. She is fearful of the judgements that may be directed towards her by her family if anyone else finds out. She fears the criticism that others will make of her, how society would affect her well being. In this time period women would be looked down upon for what Dewey Dell is going through, she does not want anyone else to find out because of this. She thinks of the worst case scenario that Pa’s expression would be if he were to find out.
Dewey Dell says to Darl, “Are you going to tell Pa are you going to kill him? ” (Faulkner 27). She does not mean kill literally, she means that if Darl tells him about her pregnancy, she thinks that he will have the worst reaction, and it would figuratively kill him. She fears how society will view her: “She’s too young”, “She’s not married”, “This pregnancy wasn’t even planned”, “Where’s the father anyways? “, etc. This is what triggers Dewey Dell to rat Darl out. She does this naturally for her own good, she seized the erfect opportunity to eliminate the cause of all her worrying, Darl. She was not thinking about Darl at all when she did this, and how this would impact him, she just went for it to end the suffering she was facing. She did what every other character did in this novel, she did it to benefit herself, and no one else. Dewey Dell’s story displays that internally suppressing one’s thought can lead them to doing irrational acts relating to their hidden emotions. Towards the end of the novel, Dewey Dell acts out of place because of her suppressed thoughts.
This is a common theme that stays consistent throughout the novel, and without her internally kept thoughts at the beginning of the novel, she would not have acted so out of place towards the end of the novel. She reaches her breaking point by holding in the secret of her being pregnant, she cannot take it anymore. According to Darl, she will not even admit the pregnancy to herself, “The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it? But you know it is true now. I can almost tell you the day when you knew it was true.
Why wont you say it, even to yourself? She will not say it” (Faulkner 40). Dewey Dell knows that if she admits to herself that this whole “pregnancy thing” is actually happening, then she will have to deal with it instantaneously, which worries her. She does not want to tell anyone about this, she will not even tell herself. By suppressing these emotions, worrying, and fear that someone else will find out this causes her to build up this emotional pain, which causes her to reach her final straw and rat out darl to take away her despair.
With this anguish she is undergoing, her actions show what she is feeling when she does tell on Darl. Dewey Dell is revealed indirectly as the culprit for telling on Darl for burning the barn down: But when we got it filled and covered and drove out the gate and turned into the lane where them fellows was waiting, when they come out and come on him and he jerked back, it was Dewey Dell that was on him before even Jewel could get at him.
And then! believed I knowed how Gillespie knowed about how his barn aken fire. (Faulkner 237) Cash knew by this action Dewey Dell was the one that told on Darl for the barn incident. Cash also describes Dewey Dell before the police took Darl away, “... when them fellows told him what they wanted and that they had come to get him and he throwed back, she jumped on him like a wild cat… ” (Faulkner 237). She reacted in an aggressive way, almost as if she wanted to get back at him for knowing her secret that caused her all this suffering.
The fact that she told on Darl, top of attacking him, shows the stress that he caused her and how when he was finally being taken away, she got out all her anger towards him. Being that she holds in these thoughts in her head, she results to using selfish motives and the audience later realizes that by her doing this was not the best idea because it just causes her to act out irrationally in many ways. As can be seen in the novel As I Lay Dying, Dewey Dell learns that betraying her family is acceptable since her parents do the same, and that she naturally results to selfish motives to fix the dilemma she is in.
Thinking that Darl and her baby are out of the equation, she will return to her bigger responsibilities as the caretaker of her siblings, and staying withdrawn from letting out her thoughts. Dewey Dell keeps all her thoughts to herself, and in the long run, this benefits her. Regardless of the time period that one is in, it stays consistent that internally kept thoughts will eventually cause one to let out emotions in different ways.
