Fish and Death
2. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is replete with repeating motifs, including (but not limited to) the auditory image of Cash’s saw, Vardaman’s fishy preoccupations, Anse’s “I can’t be beholden,” and 🐙ANIMAL MAGNETISM🐙. Choose one of Faulkner’s motifs and track its evolution through the novel so far. How does the leitmotif transmute throughout the narrative? How does it relate to the hero’s journey? As I Lay Dying , one of the quintessential stream-of-consciousness novels, is usefully read and interpreted through the paradigm of the unreliable narrator. The novel is replete with motifs that exemplify the telling of the story from the various characters’ perspectives, each of which has their own shortcomings, biases, and strengths in understanding the narrative. One of the most obvious motifs is Vardaman and his fish, which symbolize his childhood innocence and inability to process the trauma of death. The most clear of these symbolisms is his conflation of the death ...