Similarly to Benjy from The Sound and the Fury, Vardaman offers an innocent commentary on the events of the novel, even though the stream of consciousness of other characters around him seem full of ineffable desires and strange secrets. While most of his interior monologue resembles a funnel for the pure landscape around him, it seems to say more than what simply lies on the surface. If Darl is the philosopher of the Bundren family, Vardaman is the poet; in that he speaks with the senses, color and sound, making sense of reality in a separate plane than the reality of the pure prose of other chapters.
"She was under the apple tree and Darl and I go across the moon and the cat jumps down and runs and we can hear her inside the wood," (204).
After this particular-strangely-beautiful thought, Darl and Vardaman have a conversation about Addie's corpse seeing through the wood of her coffin, talking to God. Darl leaves the matter, "Come . . . we must let her be quiet. Come," (205).
Does this interaction foreshadow anything to come? What does it say about Vardaman? Do you agree with the idea of him being in touch with an alternate plane of existence; a more poetic consciousness? or is his reality just like the others? Why might Faulkner need a character like Vardaman?
-grayson
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