What happens in Chapter 57 of As I Lay Dying?
Darl has been taken away by two state men to Jackson. The chapter unfolds in a fractured voice—seemingly Darl's own, as he refers to himself in the third person—while being placed on a train, laughing uncontrollably. Two men in mismatched coats, armed with pistols, accompany him: one seated next to him and the other facing backward. The narrator contemplates the state's money, the two-sided nickel, and a spyglass Darl returned with from the war in France that features an obscene image. The narrating voice repeatedly asks Darl why he is laughing, only to receive the response "Yes yes yes yes yes." The scene shifts to the wagon, still parked in the town square, hitched and unmoving, with Jewel standing beside it and Dewey Dell, Vardaman, and Cash eating bananas on or in the wagon. The narrating voice notes that the wagon has "that unmistakable air of definite and imminent departure that trains have." The chapter concludes with the image of Darl confined in Jackson, his "grimed hands lying light in the quiet interstices," foaming at the mouth, still responding "Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes."
Analysis
This technique is both disorienting and purposeful — by the end, he is referred to as "our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson," observed from the outside while still expressing himself from within.
The chapter's main theme centers on duality without resolution. The state's money is described as having "a face to each backside and a backside to each face," a concept the narrator terms "incest." The nickel shows "a woman on one side and a buffalo on the other," presenting "two faces and no back." In contrast, Darl's war spyglass reveals "a woman and a pig with two backs and no face." This chiastic pairing — two faces/no back versus two backs/no face — compulsively examines the idea of things that cannot be held whole or stable, reflecting Darl's own fragmented identity.
The two attendants are portrayed with unsettling accuracy: mismatched coats and shaved necks described as if a carpenter's chalk-line had been used, darkly connecting them to Cash's craftsmanship. They seem bureaucratic and impersonal, yet strikingly physical.
The tone shifts sharply in the wagon scene. While the train is filled with frantic laughter, the wagon is frozen — "motionless," "hitched," completely still — yet it carries "that unmistakable air of definite and imminent departure." The contrast between departure and stasis, along with the mundane act of eating bananas from a paper bag, adds a bleak, absurdist weight to the closing image. The chapter ends with Darl foaming and caged in Jackson, his grimy hands resting lightly in the quiet spaces as he gazes out.
Key quotes from Chapter 57
“Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying light in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.”
Near the end of the chapter, the narrating voice — Darl himself, speaking in the third person — describes his own confinement in the asylum.
“the state’s money had a face to each backside and a backside to each face, and they are riding on the state’s money which is incest.”
The narrator explains why one attendant must ride backward, launching into a meditation on coins, duality, and incest.
“There is about it that unmistakable air of definite and imminent departure that trains have, perhaps due to the fact that Dewey Dell and Vardaman on the seat and Cash on a pallet in the wagon-bed are eating bananas from a paper bag.”
The narrator describes the family's wagon still standing in the town square after Darl has been taken away.
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