Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Animals
Shortly after Addie’s death, the Bundren children seize
on animals as symbols of their deceased mother. Vardaman declares
that his mother is the fish he caught. Darl asserts that Jewel’s
mother is his horse. Dewey Dell calls the family cow a woman as
she mulls over her pregnancy only minutes after she has lost Addie,
her only female relative. For very different reasons, the grief-stricken
characters seize on animals as emblems of their own situations.
Vardaman sees Addie in his fish because, like the fish, she has
been transformed to a different state than when she was alive. The
cow, swollen with milk, signifies to Dewey Dell the unpleasantness
of being stuck with an unwanted burden. Jewel and his horse add
a new wrinkle to the use of animals as symbols. To us, based on
Darl’s word, the horse is a symbol of Jewel’s love for his mother.
For Jewel, however, the horse, based on his riding of it, apparently
symbolizes a hard-won freedom from the Bundren family. That we can
draw such different conclusions from the novel’s characters makes
the horse in many ways representative of the unpredictable and subjective
nature of symbols in As I Lay Dying.
Addie’s Coffin
Addie’s coffin comes to stand literally for the enormous
burden of dysfunction that Addie’s death, and circumstances in general,
place on the Bundren family. Cash, always calm and levelheaded,
manufactures the coffin with great craft and care, but the absurdities
pile up almost immediately—Addie is placed in the coffin upside
down, and Vardaman drills holes in her face. Like the Bundrens’
lives, the coffin is thrown off balance by Addie’s corpse. The coffin
becomes the gathering point for all of the family’s dysfunction,
and putting it to rest is also crucial to the family’s ability to
return to some sort of normalcy.
Tools
Tools, in the form of Cash’s carpentry tools and Anse’s
farm equipment, become symbols of respectable living and stability
thrown into jeopardy by the recklessness of the Bundrens’ journey.
Cash’s tools seem as though they should have significance for Cash
alone, but when these tools are scattered by the rushing river and
the oncoming log, the whole family, as well as Tull, scrambles to
recover them. Anse’s farm equipment is barely mentioned, but ends
up playing a crucial role in the Bundrens’ journey when Anse mortgages
the most expensive parts of it to buy a new team of mules. This
trade is significant, as the money from Anse’s pilfering of Cash’s
gramophone fund and the sale of Jewel’s horse represents the sacrifice
of these characters’ greatest dreams. But the fact that Anse throws
in his farm equipment should not be overlooked, as this equipment guarantees
the family’s livelihood. In an effort to salvage the burial trip,
Anse jeopardizes the very tools the family requires to till its land
and survive.
