Ch 3: "One" -Metallica

"One" -Metallica 

I love this song and I am so glad that I found a way to add it into this playlist. In one section Dewey Dell is describing how in a nightmare she had she could not feel anything:

I thought I was awake but I couldn't see and couldn't feel I couldn't feel the bed under me and I couldn't think what I was I couldn't think of my name I couldn't even think I am a girl I couldn't even think I nor even think I want to wake up nor remember what was opposite to awake so I could do that I knew that something was passing but I couldn't even think of time then all of a sudden I knew that something was it was wind blowing over me. . . (121). 

At this point in the book Dewey Dell has just described her despair about not being able to grieve properly; now we see her reaction. She thinks back to this nightmare that she had when she used to sleep with Vardaman (whenever that was). In the dream she describes a life practically worse than death. The song "One" by Metallica illustrates her dream with the lyrics and the video itself. The song literally starts with the words: "Can't tell if this is true or dream." In the video there are scenes from Johnny Get Your Gun that depict a young soldier who had to get all of his limbs cut off. The boy is stuck inside his mind. There is no way for him to communicate with the world or kill himself as the song later portrays is his ultimate goal. The words the boy uses are extremely similar to Dewey Dell's "I'm either dead or remembering...How can you tell when you're awake and asleep" which is what Dewey Dell is feeling- lost and within herself. The lyrics of the song help in showing how deep within herself Dewey Dell is:

 Now the world is gone, I'm just one 

Oh God help me 

Hold my breath as I wish for death 

Oh please God, help me

Darkness imprisoning me 

All that I see 

Absolute horror 

I cannot live 

I cannot die 

Trapped in myself 

Body my holding cell 

Within this time period many women were under strict restrictions. Being out in the country and depending on your family for any sort of human relationships and then those relationships practically nonexistent can be seen as a type of darkness. Dewey Dell describes this darkness that envelopes her when she enters the barn right after her mother dies, "I begin to rush upon the darkness but the cow stops me and the darkness rushes on upon the sweet blast of her moaning breath, filled with wood and with silence" (62). I believe that even though the fact that Dewey Dell keeps being connected to a cow may seem degrading (and it is) it can also be seen as good. In this scene where Dewey Dell is walking through the barn the cow is symbolic of her because both have something inside them. Dewey Dell even calls attention to this fact when she says, "What you got in you aint nothing to what I got in me, even if you a woman too," but even though scholars have made this connection they are missing a vital one (63). The cow follows Dewey Dell all around the barn, supposedly in order to be milked, but it might also be because the cow is trying to comfort her because the cow does know what Dewey Dell is going through. It also seems like, from what the quote from page sixty-two illustrates  that the cow might be seen as protecting Dewey Dell from the darkness of being alone. The cow is her hope or guardian angel protecting her since nobody else will. As the cow cries to Dewey Dell to relieve her of the milk so to does Dewey Dell cry to the world/reader to "tend her" or to help her.