Rough Draft									Michael Pruess

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it 
leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”
- Jan Glidewell

	In his book As I Lay Dying, Faulkner depicts Jewel Bundren as someone who cannot part with his past. In Requiem for a Nun, Faulkner writes that "the past is never dead. It's not even past." This holds true for Jewel. Indeed, Jewel's arms are too full to embrace the present. He is clutching the past—his dying mother and his feelings for her—so tightly to his chest that it is unable to fade away, unable to become the past. Because of who he is, what he feels, and who surrounds him, the past haunts him, never quite dead. His struggle to leave the past behind demonstrates the futility of choosing to what extent the past affects us.
	Brother Whitfield's interpretation of God's word is such:

"Rise ... repair to that home in which you have left a living lie, among those people with whom you have outraged My Word; confess your sin aloud. It is for them, for that deceived husband, to forgive you: not I."
	This living lie is Jewel Bundren. Based on his brother Darl's incessant questions of "whose son are you? ... but who was your father?" and Addie's claim that she felt a need to "negative Jewel," one can infer that Jewel is the result of Addie's affair with Whitfield (212; 176). Jewel is the illegitimate child who stands out from the rest of his family. Darl describes Jewel as "a full head" taller than him, and Darl references Jewel's "pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face" on multiple occasions (3; 4). His woodenness extends itself to his social interactions—as Cora, a neighbor and friend of the family, accurately observes, Jewel is strangely distant from the rest of the family (23). On the rare occasion that he does address another human (or his horse), his speech isn't lacking in curses (213). Because of how he stands out, he is treated differently from the rest of his siblings. His mother, who arguably loved only him of her children—rather, of all the children in the world, having hated the rest of them—"coddled and petted" him, "the one she had always cherished" (21; 24). Darl in particular treats Jewel differently from anyone else, intrigued by the details of Jewel's illegitimate birth. He interrogates his younger brother, even though he "knew that [he] knew" the secret of Jewel's background (136).
	Jewel is in love with his mother (15). That she is dying, and that the rest of the family is treating her poorly, incenses Jewel, and he rages on about how it would be better if it "had just been [him]" (15). He wishes he was alone with her, "on a high hill, and [Jewel] rolling the rocks down the hill at [the rest of his family's] faces" (15). This hidden desire reflects his separation from the rest of his family; there is no attachment save the debt he feels he owes his father, and he is convinced that things would be better for both himself and his mother if everyone left them alone. His feelings are incredibly potent, and he attempts to bleed them through his horse, whom he treats with both the love he holds for Addie and the hatred he holds for his family. He "enters the maze of glittering hooves" to escape Addie's death, but even in striking "[the horse] across the face with his fist", he can't kill the past (12; 13). Addie is alive inside him; he can't put her out of his mind. She is the past and "[the past is] not even past." Unlike Darl, who claims that he "[hasn't] got ere [a mother]" in his attempt to deal with Addie's death, Jewel does not deny his mother's existence (101). According to the omniscient narration of Darl, as long as "Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be" (81). When the family almost loses the dead Addie in crossing a river, Jewel was the one who "worked so to get her outten the river" (233). Even though his actions (and the emotions behind them) are seen by his oldest brother Cash as "going against God in a way," he physically clutches Addie's coffin—the past—to his chest so tightly that he leaves his arms too full to embrace the present (233).
	Were the past the past, were it dead and gone, and were Addie out of Jewel's mind, he might be able to get along with his family. Jewel's detachment from his family stems from a feeling of apartness rooted in his different physique and mannerisms. Were that put aside, he would mesh with his siblings and father better, and he would have a lot less rage. His love for his mother, too, would be gone, buried in the past along with her body, and with that burden off his shoulders he would find his arms open, free to embrace the present. But even then, he would be dealing with a family of issues, from Darl, who "[sets] fire to a man's barn" and goes insane, to Vardaman, whose "mother is a fish" (233; 84).  If he were able to part with his past, but then he would have more room to let in his family's problems. And even then, in embracing the present, he would be malcontent. Jewel doesn't operate on the knowledge that Anse isn't his father; his detachment stems, as inferred before, from a feeling of apartness. Consciously putting something behind him wouldn't change this feeling. He would still be the illegitimate child, he would still be the one who looks different, he would still be the "jewel," and even without Darl pestering him about who his father is, the past would still be acting on him. (This section will need more text references, and soon, at that. Or maybe it's alright to build upon inferences already made? Is this the section of the essay where I say what I want to say? No, even then I need to root myself in the text, right?)
	>>Conclusion. Jewel, illegitimate child of Addie Bundren and Brother Whitfield, is hounded by a past that he is unable to shake off. While he allows his feelings of the past to get the better of him, and becomes required to take them out on his horse, his conscious thought is ultimately not what brings him down (14-15). It is the irrefutable pull of his unreconciled past that drags him away from his family and any happiness he might find in the present or future. No matter his feelings for Addie or how thoroughly he buries her, the facts that separate him from his siblings and father will always do just that. His arms are full with the past, a past that is "never dead," a past that he has no control over. Just as Addie will continue to live on inside of him whether or not he's aware of it, so to do we have no choice in how our pasts affect us. (as with the previous paragraph, I need some additional text references... and ultimately, I need to restructure this before my next draft in order to expand it.)