To me, as I was reading As
I Lay Dying the most emotionally poignant scene in the book was the scene
where Vardaman reacts to his mother’s death. All of the family members are
dealing with their grief in their own ways and I can appreciate all of the
different ways, but the raw sadness displayed in Vardaman’s chapter really gets
to me.
He begins with a sense of loss almost. He stands on the edge
of the porch and cries and narrates “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.” In my head I
interpret this scene as a boy being so lost and so confused and so angry that
all he can do to make sense of it all is to compare his mother to a dead fish.
He then is so obsessed with the
life he can feel in himself and other beings. “The life in him runs under the
skin, under my hand, running through the splotches, smelling up into my nose
where the sickness is beginning to cry, vomiting the crying, and then I can
breathe, vomiting it. It makes a lot of noise. I can smell the life running up
from under my hands, up my arms, and then I cart leave the stall.” I read this
as the boy is so sad that the fact that he is alive—the fact that the horse is
alive—while his fish and his mother aren’t is sickening to him.
He sets loose the horses in a
frenzy. So much emotion and anger built up that he was so frantic to pay this
doctor back for what he did.
“I am not crying now. I am not
anything. Dewey Dell comes to the hill and calls me. Vardaman. I am not
anything. I am quiet. You, Vardaman. I can cry quiet now, feeling and hearing
my tears,” Vardaman narrates after Cash and Dewey Dell come to him. He says he’s
not anything; he feels empty. These couple sentences affected me the most
probably. What’s left inside of Vardaman now that his mother is gone and his
fury is gone?
His final lines of “Cooked and
et. Cooked and et.” refer back to his fish analogy. It’s like he grows to
understand over the course of this chapter what his mother’s death means.
I loved Vardaman so much because
I felt a sense of emotional urgency in him that most of the others lacked. I
felt that I got more emotional development over this one chapter of Vardaman’s
than in Anse’s or Darl’s entire story.
I agree, and I think that Vardaman is one of the most (only?) likable characters in the novel. It's at moments like these where we're reminded that everyone in the novel is dealing with the loss of a loved one, and sometimes the best way to understand that is through the eyes of a child. Additionally, this scene in particular really emphasizes how young Vardaman really is, and how losing a mother at this age in particular can be tragic and scarring for someone.
ReplyDeleteIt really makes us think twice about the sheer absurdity of the fish analogy, as when it's boiled down to its essence, this is simply Vardaman's way of coping with his mother's death. As a very young kid with a seemingly incompetent family when it comes to matters like this, trying to comprehend a concept as daunting as death itself must be an enormous struggle for Vardaman. Just as Cash pours into his work on the coffin to cope with Addie's death, Vardaman's fish analogy is simply his way of understanding that his mother is gone forever.
ReplyDeleteI also felt this way about Vardaman's fish analogies. I think the "not-blood" and everything also relates to his conversation with Darl, where he basically says that Addie was, but is not is. Addie is not Addie anymore for him. All of this confusion is really relatable and so I think I probably relate the most to Vardaman.
ReplyDeleteNice post maya! I also felt an emotional connection to Vardaman and it seemed like he was one of the only characters I was able to fully empathize with because his narrations really show his emotions and thoughts. The reaction we see from him also shows the realistic and raw tone that i saw throughout the book.
ReplyDeleteAs a young boy still dependent on his mother, Vardaman is of course the most emotionally affected by his mother's death. Additionally, to experience a close death at his young age is bewildering and it leads to his sort of philosophical exploration in the novel--something that brings him and Darl closer in their relationship. Darl and Vardaman are very similar characters in that they are hyper-aware and they both have an obsession with the idea of 'being' and 'not being' in relation to death, life, and consciousness--for Vardaman, this results because of his mother's traumatic death.
ReplyDeleteAdding to the poignancy of Vardaman's efforts to wrap his head around what's happening with his mother and his family more generally is the sense that no one else is paying much attention to him at all. There is some weird, quasi-clairvoyant interaction with Darl, when they "discuss" the fish thing, but this isn't a particularly compassionate or empathetic interaction between them--Darl seems almost to be mocking or taunting Vardaman, as we see him do with Dewey Dell and Jewel. Dewey Dell is clearly the one who is supposed to be taking care of Vardaman (as the sister in the family, she'll take on this role from her mother), but she is too anxious about her own story to pay much attention to him, and she's too paranoid about everyone else finding out about her situation to empathize (as she scolds him for following her around in the barn, when he's just trying to find somewhere he can be alone).
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