Why do I even try?

Excerpt from The Unvanquished by William Faulkner

"I thought it was late," I said.  "You haven't been to bed even.  Have you?"
"No," she said.  "I've quit sleeping."
"Quit sleeping?" I said.  "Why?"
She looked at me.  I was as tall as she was, we couldn't see one another's faces: it was just her head with the short jagged hair like she had cut it herself without bothering about a mirror, and her neck that had got thin and hard like her hands since Granny and I were here before.  "I am keeping the dog quiet," she said.  
"A dog?" I said.  "I haven't seen any dog."
"No.  It's quiet now," she said.  "It doesn't bother anybody anymore now.  I just have to show it the stick now and then."  She was looking at me.  "Why not stay awake now?  Who wants to sleep now, with so much happening, so much to see?  Living used to be dull, you see.  Stupid.  You lived in the same house your father was born in and your father's sons and daughters had the sons and daughters of the same negro slaves to nurse and coddle, and then you grew up and you fell in love with your acceptable young man and in time you would marry him, in your mother's wedding gown perhaps and with the same silver for presents she had received, and then you settled down forever more while your husband got children on your body for you to feed and bathe and dress until they grew up too; and then you and your husband died quietly and were buried together maybe on a summer afternoon just before suppertime.  Stupid, you see.  But now you can see for yourself how it is, it's fine now; you don't have to worry now about the house and the silver because they get burned up and carried away, and you don't have to worry about the negroes because they tramp the roads all night waiting for a chance to drown in homemade Jordan, and you don't have to worry about getting children on your body to bathe and feed and change because the young men can ride away and get killed in the fine battles and you don't even have to sleep alone, you don't even have to sleep at all and so all you have to do is show the stick to the dog now and then and say Thank God for nothing."