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Anthropomorphism
7. Dewey Dell
Explanation and Analysis—Dewey Dell's Dialect:
In Chapter 7, Dewey Dell narrates her first chapter and demonstrates her innocence and inexperience through her use of dialect:
The first time me and Lafe picked on down the row. Pa dassent sweat because he will catch his death from the sickness so everybody that comes to help us. And Jewel dont care about anything he is not kin to us in caring, not care-kin. And Cash like sawing the long hot sad yellow days up into planks and nailing them to something.
Thus far in the novel, this is the most exaggerated use of dialect. This choice showcases Dewey Dell’s naivety by her informal language and her lack of grammar and punctuation, such as apostrophes. Though she is speaking of serious issues (her affair with Lafe, her father's idleness, both Jewel and Cash's emotional distance ), she does little to clean up her language.
At the same time, like many of the other siblings, she accounts for her family and describes them to the reader, revealing that despite her difference in cognition and education, she has their same preoccupation with the family's dysfunction. Though the way she has been raised manifests its effects differently in her speech, the root of her psyche is the same.
Related Themes:
53. Cash
Explanation and Analysis—Cash's Increased Dialect:
In one of the chapters that Cash narrates, he wonders about the nature of sanity. This is an unusual moment for Cash, where he thinks about abstract concepts rather than practical realities, and this is denoted by heightened use of dialect:
Sometimes I aint so sho who’s got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.
The intensified dialect used here demonstrates that Cash does have complex thoughts and comes from the same cultural context of the rest of his family. He sounds most like he is from Yoknapatawpha County here, more so than anywhere else in the novel. He, too, is deeply affected by the environment he grew up in despite casting a stoic and strong image most of the time. Since this dialect only comes out when Cash tries to verbally express emotions, it seems to indicate that he leans into practical, material matters as a way to distance himself from his family members, whom he sees as emotional, troubled, and incompetent.
Related Themes:
