Earlier Vardaman had confused his mother with the fish he caught on the day she died. This scene, then, combines the height of comic irony with tragic pathos as the pathetic Vardaman associates his mother's body, now apparently bobbing and floating in the river, with a fish. Faulkner does not narrate this directly; therefore, the reader must imaginatively reconstruct the scene in order to grasp the grotesque pathos of this entire section.
Tull's narration is apparently some time later in time since he is telling his wife Cora what happened. Throughout the entire episode at the river, Faulkner never mentions what Anse is doing. Whenever there is some emergency or some action that must be performed, Anse is most often rendered totally incapable. For example, during the confusion caused by the overturned wagon in which each character is desperately involved in some type of furious activity, Anse is completely absent from the scene. Imaginatively, the reader can envision Anse as a mere bystander shaking his head and muttering one of his platitudes.
Faulkner again utilizes Darl to narrate another aspect of the ill-fated crossing. And again we should notice that Anse can merely stand ineffectually by and bemoan his predicament, but he does nothing to rectify it. And when he says that he does not begrudge Addie the effort, he is actually thinking only about his teeth.
It is typical of Anse that he thinks it is lucky Cash broke the same leg, when in reality this is the worst possible thing that could have happened. But Cash himself does not even think about his leg. Cash, even in the midst of the pain of his broken leg, is more concerned about the reason that the coffin was lost. Ironically, this concern again suggests that Cash cannot become involved in more than one thought at one time. Since the opening of the novel, his entire attention has been focused upon the mechanics of the coffin itself, and since he is so proud of his handicraft, it is ironically fitting that he will be compelled to ride on top of it.
