Character Analysis Of 'Jewel Bundren In As I Lay Dying'

Jewel Bundren is an outsider in his own family. He is often described as “wooden”, cold. However, underneath that hard outer exterior is a man who loves deeply. He loves his mother unconditionally, and he loves his horse. Similarly, Stanley Kowalski is a brutish, animalistic man, who is often misunderstood and ostracized by Blanche because he is Polish. He is a man that acts with passion and has a deep love for his wife Stella. In the book As I Lay Dying, Jewel Bundren exhibits a possessive nature over his mother and his horse. The horse symbolizes Jewels struggle with expressing his love for his mother. Similarly, Stanley Kowalski from the play “ A Street Car Named Desire” has a possessive nature over Stella and his household. His possessiveness

Through Darl, we find out that biologically, Jewel is not part of the Bundren family. Darl taunts his beloved brother, he says things like “Jewel, whose son are you...your mother was a horse, but whose your father, Jewel?” (Pg.72). Addie Bundren and Pastor Whitfield conceived Jewel. He is the only child who has all of Addie Bundren’s affection, as a result of this; he is envied by Darl and pushed away by Anse. Addie Bundren adored Jewel because he was the only child who did not belong to her wretched husband Anse. Jewel was her love child, she cared for him more than she did for her other children and even breast-fed him longer than she did with Cash and Darl. However, Addie’s love was not enough to shroud Jewel from Anse’s hate and Darl’s envy, and eventually Jewel becomes a hardened, distant

He spends a lot of his time and energy on that horse. He grooms it, tames it, and feeds it. The horse is his first possession and the one other thing that Anse cannot claim over him. Jewel’s love for horses reflects the love he has for his mother; he loves her but he cannot communicate his love to her easily, it is a struggle for him. He indirectly shows his mother that he loves her. The way he saves his mothers coffin from the fire, he “is riding upon [the coffin], clinging to it, until it crashes down and flings him forward and