December 14, 2016 - 18:07
“Getting Mother’s Body” Paper Rough Draft
Author Suzan- Lori Parks is known for writing plays and novels that are spins off of, or take inspiration from, classic literature, but gives the story a twist by including different characters and conveying different themes. This was the exact case in her novel, “Getting Mother’s Body”, which she took inspiration from William Faulkner’s novel, “As I Lay Dying”. Her story parallels both Faulkner’s structure and plot; however, the story follows a pregnant teen, Billy Beede, and her family as they go on a journey to retrieve Willa May’s body. By taking from the classic novel, “As I lay Dying”, Parks adds many dimensions to her story. She takes Faulkner’s fictional tail and portrays it in a way that seems like situations could happen in real life. Taking from a classic and putting a different family in the same story offers another perspective but also shows that people of different races and backgrounds can share experiences.
Parks was fascinated by Faulkner’s structure as he developed the story through the voices of multiple characters speaking in first person. Each chapter is a different character’s voice as they react to what is going around them. In “Getting Mother’s Body”, almost half a dozen characters are given a voice but their narratives all seem to focus or have some relation to Billy Beede. What this does for the novel is give the reading a better understanding of each character’s feelings and reactions to what is going around them. It also leaves the reader wondering what the actual true story is because each character can have their own bias about events in the story. This leaves it open to interpretation by the reader as they find their own meaning to the story. These multiple characters create more dimension in the story.
Along with paralleling Faulkner’s structure, Parks also made parallels to his plot. “As I Lay Dying” follows the story of a family, whose mother recently passed, as they go on a journey to bury the body. As the story unravels, Faulkner reveals that each member of the family had a different reason for going on this journey other than to take care of their mother’s body. In many ways, the journey was taken on the basis of greed. For example, Anse Bundren goes to town to bury Addie but also get himself new teeth to be more appealing to the younger woman he’s been seeing and introduces her to the family as Mrs. Bundren. Faulkner’s story also has this shock factor as it is hard to imagine a situation a family faces quite like this. They go through many disasters along the way as their mom lays in a coffin decaying and reeking of rotting flesh.
What Parks does is take this unbelievable story and creates a situation the seems more realistic. A poor African American family, that faces many struggles in the society they live in in the 1960s, sets off on a journey to retrieve their relatives body before the land she rests in is covered by a supermarket. Parks shows that something like Faulkner’s story could also happen. Again there is this concept of greed, and how it motivates people to do things for the wrong reasons. Billy Beede has little appreciation for her dead mother, yet takes from her in every sense. She takes the lessons she learned from her mother such as taking advantage of people by finding their “Holes”, or soft spot. She physically wants to take her mother’s jewels so she can abort her and Snipes child in spite. Also, Parks includes controversial social issues for the time such as teen pregnancy, single motherhood, and lucid gender identity, which are still relatable today as topics of negative stigma. Making these connections creates a more realistic and relatable story that’s more impactful and resonating.
The Bundren and Beede family are very different, but having them take similar journeys bridges gaps between them. The Bundren family was a poor, white family from Mississippi. The Parks family was a poor, black family from Texas. Though these stories take place decades apart, the tension in the South between blacks and whites was still present. By recreating Faulkner’s story in the perspective of a black family, Parks shows that seemingly different people can share similar experiences even though they come from different backgrounds. This eliminates that experiences are specifically black or white, rich or poor, etc. In this case, the families are only different in their race and their oppression. The stories told in the voice of multiple characters, gives the novels depth and dimension that other novels lack. Ultimately, Parks parallels to Faulkner’s structure and plot uncovers the many layers of the Beede family and conveys similarities between people of different backgrounds.
Citations:
Parks, Suzan-Lori. Getting Mother’s Body. New York: Random House, 1964. Print
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. New York: Random House, 1964. Print.