Submitted by dotty.dye@asu.edu on Sat, 2014-08-02 01:41
The fifth and youngest child of Anse and Addie Bundren, Vardaman narrates ten chapters in which we follow the progression of a child's grieving process after the death of a parent. He also reveals poignant and specific examples of the poverty in which he resides. He is described by the other narrators as very small. (Vardaman is named after James K. Vardaman, who served one term each as Mississippi's Governor [1904-1908] and Senator [1913-1919]; he was a militant white supremacist whom his supporters called "The Great White Chief.")
Submitted by dotty.dye@asu.edu on Sat, 2014-08-02 01:38
The text provides very little information about Lafe, the father of Dewey Dell’s unborn baby. We do know that the day they had sex he was picking cotton in the fields with Dewey Dell, but whether he is a farmhand or simply working there because of his attraction to her isn't clear. Given the Bundrens' lack of money, however, the latter seems more likely. He gave Dewey Dell the $10 bill she carries to town to pay for an abortion. His name at least is very meaningful to her - "Lafe. Lafe. 'Lafe.' Lafe. Lafe." (62) - but it's not clear how much she means to him.
Submitted by dotty.dye@asu.edu on Sat, 2014-08-02 01:33
Anse Bundren is a farmer by vocation, but he is perhaps more accurately described with a term Faulkner's fiction regularly applies to the Snopeses: parasite. Unlike Flem, however, Anse is rendered comically rather than as a threat to the social order. He is described as a "kind of tall, gaunted man" (203). Physically his most striking feature seems to be his hair; Peabody calls it "pushed and matted up . . . like a dipped rooster" (44).
