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 of Addie and the death of the fish he catches: Vardaman states the phrase “my mother is a fish” or some immediate variation at least seven times in the novel, including the standalone chapter consisting of only that phrase (Faulkner 54, 64, 94, 120, 121). Some of Vardaman’s internal monologue helps confirm this pattern of thinking, immediately after Addie’s death: “Then I begin to cry. I can feel where the fish was in the dust. It is cut up into pieces of not-fish now, not-blood on my hands and overalls. Then it wasn’t so. It hadn’t happened then. And now she is getting so far ahead I cannot catch her.” (Faulkner 36). Vardaman, as a character, also exemplifies the idea of an unreliable narrator in a very binary manner. As a child, he exhibits almost no cognitive filtering, telling the story in pretty much as close to stream-of-consciousness/direct unbiased observation as possible. However, this comes with the tradeback of being unable or unwilling to comprehend certain concepts, events, or ideas, lending itself to the necessary use of symbolism and motif as observed with death and fish.
In particular, in contrast with the other narrators of the novel, who are characterized with higher-level biases like romance (Dewey Dell), insanity (Darl), cynicism (Tull), or religion (Cora), for example, Vardaman and his fish remain comprehensibly simplistic in their unreliable narration of reality. More generally, Vardaman’s thought processes regarding the integration of animals into his worldview (ex. Jewel’s mother is a horse) showcases the overall bias he has as a child and as someone without the necessary logical tools to dissect more complicated ideas into truth and fiction. His inability to take anything at anything other than face value is, uniquely, what makes him both the most reliable and most laughably unreliable narrator at different points in the text. As such, when interpreting the novel, Vardaman’s recount often provides the most reliable anchor points for tracking the progression of the hero’s journey.
Yeah, I think the narrative does a clear job at connecting the two ideas, and I agree it also works as a way to showcase Vardaman's young age. He's struggling to process the grief of losing his mother and often, people tend to put blame on themselves, which we can clearly see Vardaman also doing. I think we tend to overcomplicate things when reading (especially this modernist novel) but I think the thing to keep in mind the most in Vardaman chapters are his young perspective and that he's a bit of an unreliable narrator. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteI interpreted Vardaman's "My mother is a fish" as not a literal statement, but rather a connection Vardaman makes between his mother and the fish that he butchered right before her death. As a young child who doesn't know how to efficiently clean the fish, it is possible that this was his first time being asked to do such a rather bloody task and has never really been exposed to the the true totalness of death. His rudimentary, though accurate, ontological characterization of his mess as "not-fish" further highlights this. Nice post, Jonathan, keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Jonathan! Your analysis of Vardaman as both the most innocent yet unreliable narrator--specifically through the fish motif--displays how his trauma distorts his perception (especially as a young child). I am curious, do you believe we can trust Vardaman more than the others, even if he doesn't fully grasp the situation? How does this affect us as readers when trying to determine the true events of the novel?
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting about Vardaman is how reliable he can actually be as a narrator. As he's a young child, Vardaman is actually surprisingly reliable as a narrator, as he's not necessarily hiding any ulterior motives or dark pasts like some of the others may be. Furthermore, he narrates pretty much everything he sees and thinks in simple language, which makes interpreting his surroundings all the more easy for us readers. I like how your post brings attention to this fact, and it's definitely something useful to consider while analyzing how the other characters narrate their experiences. Nice post Jouyang4!
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