Both Section 18 and Section 19 — the first narrated by Cash, the second by Vardaman — are tours de force. Cash has so far been depicted as a rather literal-minded person who could concentrate only on one thing at a time. Here, in the first section to be narrated by Cash, he presents in numbers 1 through 13 the exact technique of building a coffin. This humorous, comical, and untypical narrative technique, then, reinforces the interpretation of Cash as being literal-minded.
In Cash's narration, there is no mention of his mother's death. All of his energy, his thoughts, have gone into the making of the coffin, and the coffin is of supreme importance. Now that the coffin is completed, Cash can turn his mind to something else, but this something else must also occupy his entire thought process.
The Vardaman section, the shortest section in the novel, having only five words, is also a tour de force. Faulkner has been leading up to this statement by Vardaman's many associations of his mother with the fish. All of the preceding actions and imagery connected with Vardaman have been leading up to this statement, but it nevertheless comes as a surprise.
Again the reader is involved with another question, that is, is this section the height of comedy or is it extremely pathetic? Most people would agree with the combined qualities of both the comic and the pathetic. But how is one to respond to a comic assertion by a confused young boy that his dead mother is a fish?
