My Mother is a Fish- Vardman

-Summary and Analysis of Section 2-

"Vardaman is full of angry, confused feelings; he keeps thinking of the moment before the fish was cut and before his mother was dead. He hears no living thing, and even the sensory information connected to Jewel's magnificent horse dissolves into its different components."

-Short Summary-

"Vardaman, the youngest child, is traumatized horribly by his mother's death, and continues to confuse her with the fish he caught and killed earlier that same day. "

Isn't as i lay dying a band??? what's the book about?

are you serious?? why do people have to be so dense?

yes there is a book and the book will always be better than the band could ever imagine.. go to school and learn something.

the bundrens are the coolest hicks you will ever hear of.

bc jewels mother is a horse.

vardermans mother is a fish.

darl has no mother and if he did it wouldnt be a fish,

but darl and varderman are brothers.

is jewel his brother?

bc jewels mother is a horse.

not a fish.

and darl is crazy.

read the book.

yea what they said the book is not about some stupid band it is about a family trying to overcome nature on their way to bury their mother. if you would get an education you would have known that by now. by the way does anyone have any ideas about a new adventure for the bundrens?

it's alot more than just about "overcoming nature". and it's way more than a band. (Faulkner has often said that he got the idea for the title of this novel from a quote by Agememnon.)

it's about personal truths and objective truths,societal definitons of normalacy and existentialism, among other philosophy.

but to answer the original question-- what is the significance of Vardaman's quote "my mother is a fish".

Vardaman is equating his mother with the fish- both are no longer, as Darl would put it, "is", but rather "was". They have changed because of death, as Vardaman said, the fish has changed into pieces of "not-fish" and "not-blood" just as Addie as changed into "not-Addie". The two no longer have a defining quality, they have no more essence (which for further analysis can be interpreted as an esistentialist view). Vardaman is attempting to understand his "oneself", his defining purpose, which Addie had been apart of in some regards.