Salvage The Bones Literary Analysis
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In her novel Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward reworks William Faulkner’s animal imagery from his Southern Gothic As I Lay Dying. As it is presented in As I Lay Dying, comparisons to animals are generally negative and pervade a sense of grotesque dehumanization. Shortly after the death of his mother, the young boy Vardaman states, “My mother is a fish” (84). Vardaman’s innocent comparison of his mother’s corpse to that of a fish contrasts greatly with the comparisons of humans to animals in Salvage the Bones. By likening his mother to a fish, Vardaman unknowingly illustrates the monstrous state of his mother and her lack of agency and influence within her own life. When describing China’s birthing process, Esch relates that, “China is blooming”