Vardaman’s ConfusionVardaman’s Confusion  Bored Holes  Why does Vardaman bore holes into Addie’s coffin?  What does Vardaman’s young mind not fully understand?  “My mother is a fish.”  How does Vardaman connect his mother to the fish?  Vardaman sees the fish as a displacement of his mother.  The fish’s transformative process links to the transformation Addie goes through from being alive to not alive.  Although Vardaman can begin to understand that Addie is no longer “alive,” he still does not fully understand the essence of death.  He understands what something is not, but not what something is! This is the simplistic way we figure out the world at the beginning – through differentiation.

Faulkner’s LanguageFaulkner’s Language  Words are nothing without meaning.  What good are well crafted sentences if they are not expressing a truth? What if words were filled with truth and structure became secondary?  Faulkner’s words gain meaning only when the reader gains insight into the truth the characters are delivering.  Remember when we talked about madness? Madness can be arbitrary? Well, what about words? Can words be arbitrary?