"As I Lay Dying"- Content 1

In this post I will discus Vardaman's fish and how he relates it to his mother.

Throughout the first 84 pages, Vardaman tries to connect the fish that his father makes him clean and his mother's death. Vardaman seems to be a young boy who had never expierence death before, and the sudden loss of his mother has left him unable to cope. He knows and accepts that the fish is dead, and he knows but does not accept that his mother is dead, but I think that when he tries to process the fact that his mother is dead and accept it, all he can think of is how the fish is dead and his mother is not a fish. His relation of the fish to his mother leads him on a confusing journey of what is real and what is not and why God would take his mother so far away if he can invent such wonderful things as a train. I think that Faulkner makes Vardaman's reaction to his mother's death so strong in order to convey the extreme emotions that grief can take a person through, particuarly someone who has never expierenced death. I think that Faulkner chooses a fish, something so common that is gross when dead, but beautiful while alive because that is sort of what death does to his mother- it takes something beautiful and turns it into something inhuman, something that isn't what it once was in Vardaman's eyes. Vardaman also goes through many of the most important stages of grief over his mother's death with the fish: denial- he runs out of his mother's room and passes the spot where he cleaned the fish, questioning- asking why God made the fish just go into the pan when it died and took his mother so far away, discussing it on page 70 with Vernon in terms of the fish's death because Vernon could relate to Vardaman -- "'You was there. You seen it laying there... You seen the mark in the dirt", and finally acceptance on page 84, "My mother is a fish." All of the comparisons that make Vardaman seem crazy with grief resulted in his acceptance of it because he combined his two encounters with death into one that makes his mother's death not seem so terrible because she is now something different and beautiful that he could see again whenever he sees a fish.