Post by msheil9 on Nov 13, 2011 22:11:50 GMT -5
The young man stands on the edge of his porch,
The days were short and the father was gone,
There was no one in the town and no one in the field,
This dusty barren land had given all it could yield.
I've been kicked off my land at the age of sixteen,
And I have no idea where else my heart could have been,
I placed all my trust at the foot of this hill,
And now I am sure my heart can never be still,
So collect your courage and collect your horse,
And pray you never feel this same kind of remorse.
Seal my heart and break my pride,
I've nowhere to stand and now nowhere to hide,
Align my heart, my body, my mind,
To face what I've done and do my time.
Well you are my accuser, now look in my face,
Your opression reeks of your greed and disgrace,
So one man has and another has not,
How can you love what it is you have got,
When you took it all from the weak hands of the poor?
Liars and thieves you know not what is in store.
There will come a time I will look in your eye,
You will pray to the God that you always denied,
The I'll go out back and I'll get my gun,
I'll say, "You haven't met me, I am the only son".
Seal my heart and break my pride,
I've nowhere to stand and now nowhere to hide,
Align my heart, my body, my mind,
To face what I've done and do my time.
Seal my heart and break my pride,
I've nowhere to stand and now nowhere to hide,
Align my heart, my body, my mind,
To face what I've done and do my time.
Well yes sir, yes sir, yes it was me,
I know what I've done, cause I know what I've seen,
I went out back and I got my gun,
I said, "You haven't met me, I am the only son".
The song is called “Dust Bowl Dance” and therefore I think it can be concluded that the narrative in this song, whatever it may be, takes place during the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a few years after As I Lay Dying is set, but I think the evident time period in the title as well as the banjo played in the song set a suitable tone for 1920s Mississippi. I initially chose this song because of two lines I heard: “The days were short and the father was gone” and “You haven't met me, I am the only son”—and I stuck with it. Listening to those two lines immediately reminded me of Jewel. He is without a father and he very much wants to be the only son of Addie, and in some respects he is. We learn from the single chapter that Jewel narrates that his greatest dream is to stand alone on a hill with his mother, throwing boulders down at everybody else. Addie too, to an extent, claims Jewel as the only son “of her,” or at least the only son “not of Anse.” Jewel represents Addie’s freedom from Anse, her only real extension of herself, thus he is “the only son.” Addie also claims that Jewel is her “savior” and her “salvation.” In the novel Faulkner makes imperfect allusions to Jesus Christ through Jewel; Addie calls him her salvation, and he is the son of a (physically) absent “holy” father, Whitfield. Likewise, I think there are imperfect parallels between the speaker in “Dust Bowl Dance” to Christ:
There will come a time I will look in your eye,
You will pray to the God that you always denied,
The I'll go out back and I'll get my gun,
I'll say, "You haven't met me, I am the only son".
These lines particularly jumped out. Besides the use of “God,” “You haven’t met me, I am the only son” again, is a bold statement and it’s repeated in the song. It could refer to Jesus being the only son of God. In the fourth verse, the speaker denounces his “accusers,” presumably the government, who took his land and took land from the poor. He preaches fairness and condemns those who steal, saying “Liars and thieves you know not what is in store,” implying that he knows a punishment they will face in the next life. The connections are inexact, but both Jewel and the speaker in the song are in some way associated with Jesus. And just as Jesus suffered in Gethsemane and on the cross, Jewel suffers loneliness from the loss of his mother and a disassociation with his family, and the speaker in the song suffers loneliness from (possibly) a jail sentence where he faces injustice and remorse.