Burial Rites Cheat Sheet PDF

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Electronic version of the cheat sheet I took into the SAC on the text 'Burial Rites', containing quotes, themes and key events, broken down by character and theme....

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BURIAL RITES CHEAT SHEET Agnes:  Given the circumstances of her birth, her intellect is ‘surprising, considering her illegitimacy’.  ‘I am quite alone’ – makes her vulnerable and is usually ‘on the outer of the group’  ‘bittered as she grew older’; ‘godless’  ‘woman loose with her emotions, and looser with her morals’  ‘reticent, secretive and guilty’  She and Natan became ‘caught in the cracks between what we said and what we meant, until we could not find each other, did not trust the words in our own mouths’  ‘Agnes Jónsdóttir sounds like the women I should have been’  ‘Sick with finality. It is like a punch in the heart, the fact of my sentence alongside the ordinariness of the days at the farm’  ‘…talking to him only reminds me of how everything in my life has worked against me and how unloved I have been’ Tóti:  ‘diligent young man’ who accepts the role of Agnes’ spiritual advisor despite feeling unqualified  ‘too pale in experience’; ‘a mouse to tame a cat’; ‘what sort of priest will you be if you cannot withstand the appearance of suffering?’  Understands that the word of god is not the only way to help Agnes  Goes to help Agnes despite illness – ‘god will forgive me’  ‘I am here for you Agnes’ – holds her hand until the end Natan:  Well-educated and charming, opportunistic, willing to exploit the vulnerable, manipulative  many believe he is a ‘sorcerer’  ‘knack for discovering beauty’  ‘Natan Satan’ – doesn’t believe in sin; ‘It is the flaw in the character that makes a person.’  ‘Strange, for a man who could so easily laugh at the word of God, to trust instead in the simmering darkness of his own sleeping hours’  ‘He always knew what to say to people; what would make them feel good. And what would cut the deepest’  Paranoid - window of cottage looked inland, ‘superstitious signs troubled him’  ‘as changeable as the ocean’ Blöndal:

Embodies the dry, impersonal voice of officialdom  Treatment of Agnes politically driven  Disapproves of Tóti’s method of redemption  Lacks compassion and true sense of justice  Self-absorbed Margarét:  Protective of Steina and Lauga  Shares the experience of dying with Agnes and eventually accepts her Steina:  Made to feel inadequate to younger sister, Lauga  Impulsive and emotional  Curious about Agnes, believes they’ve met before Lauga:  Socially confident  Takes initiative  Smug and self-righteous  Grieves privately for Agnes Sigga:  Very young  Benefit of the doubt for being too simple-minded; ‘too young and sweet to die’ Fridrik:  ‘daring sort of boy, desperate to prove himself a man’ Truth and Story:  Underpinning Kent’s novel is the strong belief that Agnes’ reputation is worth re-examining  story telling can be ‘subversive’ as well as ‘redemptive’  tradition of storytelling in Iceland – telling the story in the badstofa surrounded by a family  Gossip is spread like wildfire, and morphs into misinformation  Truth is not fixed – facts can be amended and are largely determined by context, often validated after the event  The truth of any situation is more complex than societal or legal judgements – often a disconnect between appearance and reality – discrepancy between public and private view of Agnes ‘Nothing is simple’  ‘no such thing as truth’  ‘They don’t know me’  ‘make sure she doesn’t kill us in her sleep’  ‘I was two dead men. I was a burning farm. I was a knife. I was blood.’  ‘Just make sure the bitch stays away from the knives in my kitchen’  ‘She knows nothing’  Criminal name ‘does not belong’ to Agnes 

‘The priests always make sure they write the important things down’  ‘To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things’  I’ve told the truth and you can see for yourself how that has served me’  ‘it wasn’t her fault’ Women’s Roles/Patriarchal Society  Women had limited opportunities – generally confined to domestic duties, with less opportunity for poor women  Female servants subject to master’s will – Natan raped Steina  Women expected to know their place in social hierarchy; ‘you forget your place’  Poverty makes women vulnerable and creates ‘loose women’  Agnes is ‘too clever’ – ‘A thinking woman cannot be trusted’  ‘Agnes – bloody, knowing Agnes’  Learnt to read despite it being frowned upon – reading and writing is ‘vulgar for a girl’  ‘He was not averse to whipping the learning out of me if he caught me at it’  ‘no one is out to get you, Natan. You’re not so important as that’  ‘You need more than one man to say I do’ Authority and Control:  Blöndal’s treatment exposes the capricious workings of the law – ‘wants to set an example’ of Agnes ‘I intend to execute the Illugastadir murderers’, but is likely to grant Sigga and appeal because she reminds him of his wife  Religion can be misappropriated by powerful interest groups in order to shore up their authority – ‘I will not deny that the execution also brings with it an opportunity for our community to witness the consequences for grave misdemeanour’  ‘…when I must be moved, they bind and lead me where they will’ - ‘tied like a lamb for slaughter’ -‘they have strapped me to the saddle like a corpse being taken to the burial ground’ -‘I have stopped bleeding. I am no longer a woman’  ‘They did not let me say what happened in my own way, but took my memories of Illugastadir, of Natan, and wrought them into something sinister’ 

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They said I must die. They said that I stole the breath from men and now they must steal mine.’ ‘I am knifed to the hilt with fate’ Natan ‘toyed with people’ Gave Sigga housekeeper role because he knew it would ‘embarrass Agnes to be under her authority’ ‘I am of the opinion that Agnes picked up the knife and killed Natan’ ‘…criminals in this district, who have gone so long unpunished, are given their justice in the eyes of their peers’ ‘The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe’ ‘it’s the waiting that cripples’ ‘One night I would be his lover, with the hard rhythm of his breath matching my own. And then, the next, I was Agnes the work maid’ Natan raped Sigga Take away her ‘stone’ – protection that enables meaningful communication ‘That is how I came to be a pauper. Left to the mercy of others, whether they had any or not’

Love:  ‘I was worst to the one I love best’ – The Laxdæla Saga  Presents love as a damaging emotion, inflicting misery, uncertainty and destroying lives  Natan eventually becomes infuriated by the qualities he liked – inquiring mind and sense of self  Love is a journey from innocence to experience  ‘I felt I might die from love’  ‘The weight of his fingers, like a bird landing on a branch. It was the drop of the match. I did not see that we were surrounded by tinder until I felt it burst into flames’  ‘For the first time in my life, someone saw me and I loved him because he made me feel I was enough’  Didn’t think Natan would lie to her, but was mistaken  ‘the first bar of morning light that came through the window severed our trysts as though it were a knife’  ‘All your whores supping together under your roof’  ‘I began to wonder if he ever loved me’  ‘Just because you play at being wife, does not make you a married woman’  ‘…flushed with happiness at the knowledge he slept beside me’  Killing Natan is final act of love

Loss:  In nineteenth century rural Iceland, life is under constant threat – people are conditioned to accept loss and are sustained by religious faith and a strong belief in afterlife – or strength of character for Agnes  Agnes’ early discovery that life brings little certainty, let alone security, created doubt and loneliness and discourages intimacy – but this does not protect her from the grief of Natan’s death – ‘I wake every morning with a blow of grief to my heart’  Agnes’ condemnation to death results in a loss of identity  Authorities exercise their control sending Agnes to her childhood home, where the community knows her and would erase the memory of the child she was with the vulgar ‘murderess’ she is now labelled as – it would be ‘humiliation’  Without Christian burial rites Agnes will be forgotten  Convinced herself she no longer loved her family to supress her misery  ‘The only person who would understand how I feel is Natan’  ‘no one left to love. No one left to bury’  ‘escaping to church to feel part of something. Pure. Perhaps things would have been different if Natan had let me go to church at Tjörn’  ‘loneliness threatened to bite you at every turn’  ‘I cradled his head in my lap and saw he would not survive the night’ Redemption:  Agnes is determined to retain ‘what has not yet been stolen from me’, and is determined to ‘close myself to the world’  Redemption involved deliverance from sin and in turn eternal salvation  Execution viewed as ‘God’s justice’, and is used by Blöndal for political propaganda  Agnes’ redemption comes from being treated with fairness and compassion – being given a voice through which she can share her story – she is not religiously rescued, but emotionally and spiritually rescued  Distinction needs to be made between a person’s actions and who they are  Agnes no longer needs the protective magic of her stone, as she now has a new family – her true redemption

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‘You must administer God’s word and inspire repentance and acknowledgement of justice.’ ‘Shall we begin with a prayer?’ ‘We want you to return to God’ ‘Thou shalt not kill’ ‘must apply the Lord’s word to her as a whip to a hard-mouthed horse’ ‘it is not the stern voice of a priest delivering the threat of brimstone, but the gentle and enquiring tones of a friend that will best draw the curtain to her soul’ ‘return to God’s word. Forget Agnes’s. She has nothing you need to hear unless it is a confession’ ‘You are not a monster’ Lauga calls Agnes by her name Margarét calls Agnes ‘my girl’...