Addie's general view of life is nihilistic, which perhaps is reflected also in her children. As noted above, Addie can function only in terms of violence. She searches out some act of violence that will penetrate her sense of aloneness. Essentially, Addie seems to be a rather destructive personality, and as a mother she is unable to love her children openly. Instead she infects them in some ways with her terrible view of life. Only in secret can she really give of herself and offer love to Jewel, but she hates herself for this also.
Addie's view of words is that they are unclear. Essentially, she seems to imply that people substitute meaningless words for significant actions, and thus, with this view, she would detest Anse because all Anse can do is murmur platitudes. We have seen that he is incapable of performing any task, however small or trivial it might be, thus rendering him useless except for his words. On the other hand, Cash never uses words and speaks only after some fact or deed is accomplished. Jewel similarly expresses his love not in words but in acts of violence. And Darl, the one who most relies on words, is the one most rejected by Addie and ends up being sent to the insane asylum.
Consequently, Addie, who feels that she has been deceived by words, decides to get her revenge on Anse by extracting a promise — which is, of course, only words — to take her back to Jefferson, and this would be her revenge because then Anse would have to perform some action rather than relying on words.
Immediately after hearing from Addie that she had had an affair with a preacher, we then encounter the preacher himself. Furthermore, we had heard that Addie went to Whitfield thinking to experience a violent and overpowering reaction from the preacher. But this section shows that Whitfield is also only words. He is going to let his intention to confess replace the actual confession, emphasizing Addie's evaluation that even Whitfield was only ineffectual words.
