As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, is a novel not only unique in structure but in context. The reader is given a chance to read the thoughts of a variety of characters with diverse personalities as a result of the distinctive structure based on fragments of interior monologues. A very distinctive character found in this novel is Vardaman, mainly because he represents the innocence that the other characters lack. This boy is the youngest of the four children of Anse and Addie Bundren, and quite innocent and naive. These main characteristics make Vardaman more vulnerable to Addie's death, giving way for him to be trapped in denial and to state different ways to keep his mother alive. Vardaman proves to be innocent yet logical due to the association he does of his mother with a fish, his way to keep his mother alive even though she is already found dead and blame Peabody for Addie's death.
             Being naive and innocent is a mixture that gives way for Vardaman's reactions to embrace non-acceptance and as a product, permit him to associate his mother with an animal, a way for his mother to not go from "is" to "was". Moments before her death, Vardaman had caught an enormous fish, and entered the room where his mother laid. He was anxious to show it to her, nevertheless Anse tells him to leave and clean it up. The boy obeys and then returns full of blood from cleaning the fish. In this moment, Addie is about to die, nevertheless able to look into Vardaman's eyes. She suddenly passes away and "from behinds pa's leg Vardaman peers, his mouth full open and all color draining from his face into his mouth...he begins to move slowly backward from the bed, his eyes round, his pale face fading into the dusk like a piece of paper..." (Faulkner, 49) and then runs off crying and confused. The combination of innocence with lack of acceptance leads him to search for explanations, and the only one he
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