Vardaman's Fishy Predicament
In As I Lay Dying, written by William Faulkner, Vardaman, the youngest of the Bundren family, relates his mom to a dead fish that he caught and killed. This seemingly inconsequential detail conveys one of the many tactics for understanding and processing the death of Addie Bundren. In the beginning, the fish seems to be just an everyday occurrence wrapped along with the chaotic family dynamics particularly for Dewey Dell, but as Vardaman’s chapters happen, the meaning of the fish gets complicated. This complication first occurs after Vardaman sees his mom in her dying condition and then panics. He runs off and starts beating the animals. Initially, him beating the animals draws the most attention, but upon further inspection, the blending of the identities of the fish and his mom starts to happen. He internally monologues this: “It is cut up into pieces of not-fish now, not-blood on my hands and overalls. Then it wasn’t so. It hadn’...