The Importance Of Animals In As I Lay Dying

Throughout William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying animals are used for emotional support by younger characters in order for them to understand adult topics that they are grappling with. The cow is used by Dewey Dell in order to guide her way through preparing to be a mother, Jewel’s horse and how it helped him grieve over the death of his mother, as well as Vardaman’s association between his mother and the fish in order to help him understand the concept of death. One way that Faulkner uses animals to reflect characters’ situations is by using the cow to reflect Dewey Dell’s emerging issues with future motherhood. The sacrifices made by mothers create a common theme throughout the length of As I Lay Dying. One example of this is the chapter

Throughout a large part of his childhood, Jewel spent his days resting on the family farm and nights working on clearing a plot for his neighbor with whom his mother conceived him with during her marriage with Anse. Jewel’s apparent lack of effort or want to help out caused his siblings to grow to resent him, as they believed that Addie was coddling him. Finally, after saving up his under-the-table earnings, Jewel bought himself an extremely high-pedigree horse for someone of the time and social status, much to the surprise of his siblings and his father, Anse. Outraged by the purchase, Anse wanted to sell the horse claiming that it would cost him in the long run and that the work he had done to the neighbor’s property took away from the work he could have done to the family farm. While talking about how he would end up wasting his own money on the horse to pay for feed, Jewel replied, ‘“He wont never eat a mouthful of yours,’ he said. ‘Not a mouthful. I’ll kill him first. Dont you never think it. Dont you never.” (Faulkner 163) Faulkner uses Jewel’s horse as a metaphor for the illegitimacy of Jewel’s family with Anse’s perception that the money Jewel made belonged to him. Jewel believes that Anse has no right to take his money as it was earned by Jewel on his own terms, but Anse believes that without the time he used to

This conclusion is brought on by his association with a fish he had caught earlier in the book with his now-deceased mother. Addie, much like the fish, was now no longer alive and thus dead. By this logic, Vardaman believes that because both his mother and the fish are both considered to be dead, that, “My mother is a fish.” (Faulkner 196) Faulkner’s use of the fish signifies Vardaman’s loose grasp on the true gravity of the situation at hand and puts into perspective for the reader how far off the rails the journey truly went. The coffin had holes drilled into it by Vardaman attempting to give Addie holes to breathe through, was sent into the stream by the party as their wagon broke, all leading to the members of the party to give up their possessions in order to complete the journey. In this sense, the fish not only becomes a symbol for Vardaman’s grasp on the quest to bury Addie but also as a biblical reference. Just like how Jesus taught that one must forgo their possessions if they want to enter the house of god, in order to return Addie to her farm in order to be married the surviving Bundren Family members were required to give up the possessions and dreams that were most near and dear to them, Dewey Dell and her abortion, Cash and his Gramophone, Vardaman and his toy train, Jewel and his horse, and even Anse and his