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Addie: Vardaman's Fish

To me, the most central motif in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is Vardaman’s fish, that he later goes to equate with his mother. Vardaman, being such a young child in the book, likely has never faced such immense grief that would come with the death of a parent or someone near to him. With a lack of experience processing grief, Vardaman’s response to his mother's death may be unorthodox at times, but his connection to the fish as the story goes on is essential to understanding his acceptance. The fish is brought up numerous times, at first with not such an obvious connection to Addie, but as the story goes on the association between Addie and Vardaman’s fish grows to a point in which the reader, too, mentally connects the two.  Vardaman crosses paths with the fish prior to his mother's death, but as she was actively passing away. The connection in time and place for Vardaman tethered the two together in his mind. When Vardaman first brought the fish home, Vernon observes t...
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The Heroine and the Hero

Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s heroine’s journey diagram follows a similar trajectory to Joseph Campbell’s 17 Step Hero’s Journey Template , which is fascinating considering that there was a found need to create a female specific path. Both the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys contain 3 stages, categorized by Campbell as the Separation, Initiation, and Return. Schmidt’s model does in fact seem to follow the three stage layout. In the Separation phase she has the Illusion of the Perfect World, the Betrayal or Realization, and the Awakening and Preparing for the Journey. In the Initiation phase the steps of Descent/Passing the Gates of Judgement, the Eye of the Storm, and Death/All is Lost are featured. Wrapping up the diagram by Return are the steps of Support, Rebirth/Moment of Truth, and Return to the Perfect World. Though Schmidt’s model of the Heroine’s Journey can fit into the same the phases with evidently less steps, the model is not a simplified version of Campbell’s Monomyth. The Heroine...
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Katniss' Heroine's Journey

       In The Hunger Games, the main character, Katniss, is living at home with her sister, Prim, and her mother. It is the day of the reaping, her last before aging out. Overtime, the odds of being selected to go into the game increases, meaning that her odds are significantly higher than her sister. However, with everyone in their district pushing poverty and needing food supplements from the government, plenty of people were entered into the ‘lottery’ as well. This moment encapsulates the Illusion to a Perfect World step of Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s Heroine’s Journey. Katniss believes that nothing bad will happen, and she will get to remain living happily with her family through the bliss of naivety. This seeming bubble of safety gets destroyed when Katniss’ younger sister, Prim, gets selected as the female tribute from District 12. To save her beloved and fragile sister, Katniss volunteers as tribute to go in her sister's place. The Realization begins to take pla...
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Shedding the Skin

        Siddhartha self-acknowledges crossing the threshold by defining the boundaries that he once declared upon himself, and further realizing that he no longer needs to be restricted by his self understanding. Hesse’s Siddhartha chapter titled “Awakening” displays Siddhartha reflecting on his past set beliefs. At one point Siddhartha “realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and existed in him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings,” (Hesse 37-38). The fitting imagery of a snake shedding its skin and slithering out into the world with a fresh bodily lining perfectly encapsulates stepping, or more slithering, into a new realm. I consider this point in the book, in which Siddhartha concedes to a new era of himself, the specific ‘Crossing the Threshold’ piece of Campbell’s monomyth. One of Siddhartha’s strongest suits as a...
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