As I Lay Dying, I Need A Hero!!

  For our final Hero’s Journey blog post I wanted to use prompt 3, thus arguing for the validity of one of the characters being the “Hero” of "As I Lay Dying". The character that I’ve decided to focus on in this post is Jewel, and by using a connection to a common heroic trope through his "Jewel's mother is a horse" motif, I want to make a case for Jewel possibly being a, if not the Hero of “As I Lay Dying.”  

First off, starting with the motif of “Jewel’s mother is a horse.” From when we were first introduced to Jewel, he’s shown to be a very standoffish character without much attachment to any of the other characters we get a point of view from, and the only thing we see him show much fondness towards is his horse. From what we’ve seen of Jewel, he doesn’t seem to be much of a hero-inclined character, however, by using his connecting motifs as evidence I want to make an argument against that. 

Jewel managed to get his horse by doing work for Mr. Quick, specifically cleaning up the new ground that Mr. Quick had recently put out. In doing this, he ended up unable to do the work he usually does come morning, and Addie covered for him despite not knowing what was going on while Anse was quick to call him lazy. When the results of Jewel’s nighttime escapades are revealed through the buying of his horse, Addie is distraught at being tricked and later Darl finds her “sitting beside the bed where [Jewel] was sleeping, in the dark. She cried hard…hating herself for doing it, hating him because she had to.”

Now, a character who doesn’t really get along with anyone, only cares for his horse, and takes advantage of his mother’s kindness doesn’t seem like a hero does he? However, the plot thickens as we get Addie’s chapter, and the Cora chapter before it. At the end of Cora’s chapter we see Addie say “He is my cross and he will be my salvation. He will save me from water and from fire. Even though I have laid down my life, he will save me.” This seems to be an extremely prophetic statement, and what tends to be a common trend in hero stories? A prophecy. This prophecy can be further enforced when you think about Addie saying “he will save me from water and from fire.” While we haven’t seen anything fire related, Jewel has in fact been involved in retrieving Addie’s body after she fell into the river, thus fulfilling the salvation from water. 

While this is all the major evidence, we have right now from what we’ve read in “As I Lay Dying” so far, I do also want to point out that I believe the more we’ve of Jewel the less of a jerk he’s being revealed to be. Some notable examples of this being when he managed to find some of Cash’s tools that had fallen in the river, as well as when he went to take his horse himself in order to get the mules to carry the coffin. Jewel is introduced as this dislikeable character, who only cares about his horse instead of his mother, and we see him (somewhat) progress as a person to giving up his horse for his mother's sake. And what's another way to say, "to give up"? Sacrifice. And what's sacrifice another example of? A Heroic Trope.

All this to say, from what I’ve explained in this blog post I believe of all the characters we see in this novel, especially the Bundren family, Jewel makes the most sense to be seen as the Hero of this story.