part of their thoughts and actions. So when Dewey Dell says, "I lean a little forward, one foot advancing with dead walking" it affects us much more personally than if an omniscient narrator says the same thing (471). Its like Dewey Dell is sharing a part of herself with us. She is sharing her knowledge of the cycle of existence. She knows that she is alive, but that each step only brings her one step closer to death, and she brings us closer to herself by giving us this knowledge. Dewey Dell embraces the readers in a way that no omniscient narrator could in this story.Vardaman is too young and inexperienced to fully understand the meaning, or meaninglessness, of life, yet he perfectly describes the motionlessness of the cycle of existence. "I strike at them, striking, they wheeling in a long lunge, the buggy wheeling onto two wheels and motionless like it is nailed to the ground and the horses motionless like they are nailed by the hind feet to the center of a whirling plate" (469). Life and death are like the horses and buggy individually they move, yet the entire cycle stays motionless in the same place. The cycle is like the whirling plate that Vardaman describes. It makes things appear to move and change, but in reality everything just stays the same. This whirling and motionless and circling imagery is repeated throughout the book. The flood scene has the whirling yet stationary imagery, and buzzards are constantly circling above Addies coffin. This repeated imagery makes it an important part of the story.The changes that the characters go through really arent changes at all; they are just the next steps in the cycle of existence. Addie dying just finalizes her life. She was moving towards death her entire life, and she finally makes it. Anse getting a new wife doesnt change anything in the family structure. She is just a replacement of Addie. Everyones life goes on just as it had before, with the exception of Darl, who goes to ...
