As I Lay Dying-

William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying is a novel about how

the conflicting agendas within a family tear it apart.

Every member of the family is to a degree responsible for

what goes wrong, but none more than Anse. Anse's

laziness and selfishness are the underlying factors to every

disaster in the book.

As the critic Andre Bleikasten agrees, "there is scarcely a

character in Faulkner so loaded with faults and vices"

(84).

At twenty-two Anse becomes sick from working in the sun

after which he refuses to work claiming he will die if he

ever breaks a sweat again. Anse becomes lazy, and turns

Addie into a baby factory in order to have children to do

all the work. Addie is inbittered by this, and is never the

same. Anse is begrudging of everything. Even the cost of a

doctor for his dying wife seems money better spent on

false teeth to him. "I never sent for you" Anse says "I take

you to witness I never sent for you" (37) he repeats trying

to avoid a doctor's fee.

Before she dies Addie requests to be buried in Jefferson.

When she does, Anse appears obsessed with burying her

there. Even after Addie had been dead over a week, and

all of the bridges to Jefferson are washed out, he is still

determined to get to Jefferson.

Is Anse sincere in wanting to fulfill his promise to Addie,

or is he driven by another motive? Anse plays "to

perfection the role of the grief-stricken widower"

(Bleikasten 84) while secretly thinking only of getting

another wife and false teeth in Jefferson. When it becomes

necessary to drive the wagon across the river, he proves

himself to be undeniably lazy as he makes Cash, Jewel,

and Darl drive the wagon across while he walks over the

bridge, a spectator.

Anse is also stubborn; he could have borrowed a team of

mules from Mr. Armstid, but he insists that Addie would

not have wanted it that way. In truth though Anse uses

this to justify trading Jewel's horse for the mules to spare

himself the expense. Numerous times in the book he

justifies his actions by an interpretation of Addie's will.

Anse not only trades Jewel's horse without asking, but he

also steals Cash's money. Later on he lies to his family

saying that he spent his savings and Cash's money in the

trade. "I thought him and Anse never traded," Armstid

said. "Sho," they did "All they liked was the horse"

Eustace a farmhand of Mr. Snopes said. Anse steels Cash's

money and towards the end of the book he also takes ten

dollars from Dewey Dell.

The ending of the book is best explained by the words of

Irving Howe. "When they reach town, the putrescent

corpse is buried, the daughter fails in her effort to get an

abortion, one son is badly injured, another has gone mad,

and at the very end, in a stroke of harsh comedy, the

father suddenly remarries" (138).

With money he has begrudged, stolen, and talked his way

out of paying, he finally buys some new teeth and a new

wife for the price of a graphophone. What defies

explanation is why Anse is so cold-hearted and indifferent

to his children? What has changed him from the hard

working twenty-two year old man he once was.

In conclusion, by thinking only of himself Anse destroys

his family. He is selfish whenever his need's conflict with

those of his family. His motives for cheating and lying

range from the greed of money to self pity. Instead of what

can I do for them Anse will always be the one thinking

what can they do for me.

Works Cited

Bleikasten, Andre. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press, 1973.

Howe, Irving. William Faulkner: A Critical Study.

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975.

William, Faulkner. As I Lay Dying.

New York: Random House, 1985.