Essentially, this section reveals Jewel’s very deep but inexpressible love for his mother. He is unable to express his love in any way except in symbols of violence, as was displayed in the last section by the manner in which he violently caressed his horse. Consequently, it is often in symbols or images of violence that we observe Jewel, and this violence is later correlated with his birth since he was, according to Addie, conceived in violence. Furthermore, later on, Darl will also taunt Jewel by saying that Jewel’s mother is a horse.
Jewel’s love for his mother is expressed in terms of standing on a high hill and throwing rocks down the hill at anyone who would intrude upon the privacy of his love for his mother. This violent image suggests the violence with which he does love his mother—a violence that will come to an end only after she is buried and Darl is sent to the insane asylum.
Later in the novel, it is Jewel who violently saves Addie from both water and fire. Section 4 serves to illustrate Jewel’s need for violence, and only through violence can he express his deep-founded and deep-rooted love for Addie. Thus, since Jewel can express himself only through acts of violence, we have only one section narrated by him. All of the other views of Jewel are through some other narrator’s eyes.
Jewel offers one humorous insight into the character of Cash, prompted by the fact that Cash, the most literal-minded of the children, is actually building the coffin under Addie’s window. Jewel recalls that when Cash was young, his mother asked him to bring her some fertilizer from the barnyard and he took the bread pan and brought it back filled with dung. This illustrated Cash’s literal-mindedness and prepares us for some of his later sections where we see him functioning only on a very literal level.
With the above incident, Faulkner introduces us to one of the interesting techniques in the novel: the juxtaposition of something that is extremely serious—the building of the coffin—with something that is inordinately comic—collecting dung in a bread pan. The juxtaposition illustrates how Jewel is trying to express his deep emotional love for his mother and his resentment that Cash is building the coffin under her window, as though he were anxious for her to die so that he can see what a good job he has done. Yet to express his idea, Jewel resorts to a comic scene involving Cash as a young boy bringing dung in a bread pan.
Throughout the entire novel, we will have many comic aspects juxtaposed with a potentially tragic scene. The structure of the novel depends heavily upon this tragic-comic combination, and it is sometimes difficult to analyze our response to such scenes.
As Darl confronts his father about the need of hauling the load of lumber and the practicality of securing the three dollars, we realize that Darl has a strong practical side to his nature and furthermore knows how to go about accomplishing such a task. Later, it will be Darl who will be sensible enough to prevent the fight in Jefferson between Jewel and the town man. The reader should take these facts into account when trying to determine the degree of sanity that Darl possesses.
However, one could also view Darl’s desire to deliver the lumber as another method of tantalizing Jewel, of taking Jewel away from his dying mother. Darl is certainly aware that Jewel is unable to face any type of reality where his mother is concerned. Jewel refuses to believe that she is dying and even refuses to say the word “coffin.” Darl is acute enough to notice this reluctance and explains it by saying that Jewel doesn’t know how to express his love and speaks with harshness so as to cover up the fact that he can’t say the word coffin.
Since Jewel can express his love only violently, Anse then completely misunderstands him. Anse thinks that Jewel has no love for his mother and no respect for her. But, as Darl points out, it is because Jewel loves her so strongly and so violently that he acts as he does. Darl’s perception is further indicated in the manner in which he judges his father. He mentions that once when Anse was young, he was sick “from working in the sun” and now believes that if he ever sweats he will die. But Darl knows that Anse uses this excuse to cover up for his laziness.
