Aim: How does Faulkner begin to establish the idea that words are insufficient?

1. Aim: How does Faulkner begin to establish the idea that words are insufficient? Do Now: All of the characters seem to want to express ideas for which they are missing words. Can you supply them? When Vardaman calls the fish and then not fish – what is he trying to say? When Dewey Dell says Darl told her things but without the words – what is she trying to say? When Addie looks out the window and calls outs, “You, Cash,” – what is she trying to communicate?

2. Vardaman’sConfusion • 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.

3. Faulkner’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?