Vardaman
Vardaman states that his mother is a fish.
Analysis
The Bundren siblings’ varied responses to Addie’s death
provide us with deeper insight into their characters. Cash’s dry,
technical list of his reasons for choosing to make the coffin on
a bevel could be read as callousness, but one could also argue that
his assembly of the coffin in front of Addie’s window is a gesture
of some kind. Jewel, on the other hand, remains completely uncommunicative
in this section, and remains so throughout the novel, as he is the
only Bundren child whose narrative is cut off following Addie’s
death. Dewey Dell speaks frequently, but she is lost in thought
over her pregnancy, which not only eclipses her awareness of her
mother’s death but even manages to distract her during the relatively
simple task of finding Vardaman in the barn. Dewey Dell mentions
that she laments this inability to focus on Addie’s passing, but
feels powerless to change it, noting that she cannot think long
enough to worry about anything. Dewey Dell’s ability to communicate
with the cow introduces an affinity for animals that endures throughout
the novel. Like the cow in need of milking, Dewey Dell is preoccupied with
her own immediate concerns and is unable to contemplate fully matters
that are not her own.
While the first sections of the novel make it clear that
Darl’s voice is the most authoritative, Vardaman’s narration takes
on increasing importance as the story progresses. Both Darl’s and
Vardaman’s voices find common ground on the incredibly intricate
issue of existence. Darl has the air of an amateur philosopher when
he ruminates, “I dont know what I am. I dont know if I am or not.”
For Darl, his mother’s transformation from a living person into
a thing to be placed in a box brings up the question of what it
means to exist. Vardaman wrestles with similar questions, although
his thoughts are conducted with the imagination of a child. As he
comes to grips with the initial pain of his mother’s death, Vardaman
observes that there exists “an is different from
my is.” Vardaman’s endless rants about the fish
puzzle the other characters, but they are simply his way of expressing
and making sense of his mother’s death. Vardaman equates the transformation
of a live fish into “not-fish” and “not-blood” with the death of
his mother, and the idea that his own parent can so suddenly cease
to exist is as traumatic for him as it is for Darl.
The various characters’ interior monologues often seem detached
from the rest of the novel, but there is in fact a very careful structure
holding them all in place. One particularly noteworthy example of
this structure can be found in the overlapping, but still contradictory,
passages in which Dewey Dell and Vardaman are both in the barn.
We see Dewey Dell pass by Vardaman twice, first in his account of
the episode, then in hers. The two narratives are connected by the
unmilked cow, a seemingly superfluous entity that reminds us that
these two voices, although separated by chapters, are in fact speaking
at the same time. Tellingly, Dewey Dell and Vardaman take away quite
different impressions of the same experience—she thinks he has been
spying on her, while he thinks she knows about his treatment of
Peabody’s team—but these differing perspectives are nonetheless
borne out of the same urge to protect their own innocence. The storm
serves a similar function, appearing in the thoughts of both Tull
and Darl and providing a sort of narrative umbrella to expose the
thematic link between the two men’s thoughts.
