Serendipity

“My mother is a fish” -Vardaman (Faulkner 84) Just when I thought As I Lay Dying couldn’t get any stranger, I read this. At first I ignored it and passed it off as another one of Vardaman’s weird claims.  Upon further contemplation I thought it was worth revisiting. Right after the death of Addie, the children suddenly start talking about animals. Vardaman says “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.” thus relating the death of his mother to the death of his fish (Faulkner 53). Aside from Vardaman, Darl declares that Jewel’s mother is his horse (Faulkner 95). Dewey Dell also has a scene with an animal when she goes outside and thinks about her pregnancy in the presence of the family cow. To me, it seems like the animals are used to help the characters reflect and cope, especially after th...

Immortal vs Mortal Revenge As we’ve already established, the Greek Gods use humans as pawns to fulfill their agendas, use them as entertainment, and use them to take out their frustration. Their attitudes are human-like, they succumb to feelings of lust, they feel envy, and of course, anger. They also know how to hold a grudge (*cough* Poseidon). One of the first examples to illustrate this was Poseidon’s anger over Odysseus blinding his son, Polyphemus. From the moment Odysseus did this, Poseidon made his life very difficult, though he knew that he couldn’t change the fact the Odysseus would eventually return home. The part that irked me the most was when Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca with the aid of the Phoenicians. Poseidon is outraged; he knows he can’t hurt Odysseus so instead he channels his anger at the Phoenicians. When he asks Zeus about what to do, Zeus responds quickly without really taking much time to think (to be quite honest their exchange sounded like elemen...