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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.
i did not read this book but i know that fish are thought as a symbol of something that needs to be let go off, specially if someone dies and the living cannot let go. really happened with my grandma so i know its true.
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