NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
As I Lay Dying is one of William Faulkner's early novels about how a family is torn apart because of conflicting agendas. The character Anse, who is the father in this novel, is probably more responsible more than any other for what eventually goes wrong with his family. We also need to remember that other members of the family are responsible for what happens to themselves. I speak here about the way they allow their father to take advantage of them.
If one was to look at the disasters that take place in this novel, we would find two underlying factors that contribute to these fiascoes: Anse's selfishness and lazy behavior. I found myself disgusted with Anse for his faults as an irresponsible husband and father. In the beginning of the novel, we discover that at the age of 22, Anse had become sick from working in the sun. From then on he used this as an excuse and refuses to ever sweat again claiming he would die. After marrying Anse, Addie becomes embittered because of her husband's irresponsible lazy practices. Part of her bitterness towards her husband is because he has used her to make children to do the work that he is unwilling to perform himself.
Anse seems to be resentful of everything. This can be illustrated, for example, when the doctor arrives to see Anse's dying wife. He complains, "I never sent for you... take you to witness I never sent for you. " His concern for the cost of the doctor is justified in his mind since she's going to die anyway; the money can be better spent on his false teeth. Addie had requested, from her family, before her death, to be buried in Jefferson. After her death, Anse gives us, the reader, the impression of being possessed with burying his wife in Jefferson.
Faulkner draws for us a scene inundated with torrential rain, muddy and washed out roads; bridges destroyed by rising rivers; Addie's corpse over ripening and the buzzards salivating. Anse is still determined to get to Jefferson. What is driving Anse's determination? Is it a sincere wish to fulfill his promise to his wife or is he driven by some other motivating factor? Anse dramatizes to the highest degree of excellence the role of the grief-stricken father and widower, all the while in the strictest confidence with himself thinking only of getting to Jefferson to buy his false teeth. At the end of the novel we find another possible motive for getting there was the acquisition of a new wife.
After searching for a way to cross the river and finding a place to do so, Anse, in his undeniable lazy character, makes it necessary for his sons, Cash, Darl, and Jewel to drive the wagon across the river. He then becomes a spectator as the struggle to get their mother's coffin safely across unfolds. Now on the other side of the river and with their team of mules lost (drowned), Mr. Armstid offers his team of mules to Anse, but he is stubborn and insists that Addie would not have wanted him to be "beholding" to anyone. Mr. Armstid's offer was refused in truth, because Anse wants to use this predicament to justify trading Jewel's horse for the mules.
This he does to spare himself any expense that he may incur. On several other occasions he seeks justification for his actions by interpreting, for his children, their mother's will. Anse not only trades Jewel's horse without asking him, but he also manipulates Jewel into giving up the horse on his own free will in memory of his mother. Though not much is said about how he steals Cash's money, but later on we find him lying to his family when he says that he has spent his saving along with Cash's in the trade for the mules. "I thought him and Anse never traded, " Mr. Armstid said. "Sho, " Eustace said. "All they liked was the horse. " Mr. Armstid learned from the farmhand the truth of the trade that Anse and Mr.
Snopes transacted. Not only had he stole Cash's money and caused Jewel to lose his horse, we find Dewey Dell being interrogated by her father as to where she had gotten the ten dollars. Just as he had done to the others, Anse, in his conniving way, robs the ten dollars from his daughter. Perhaps all that Anse embezzled from Darl was his sanity and from the youngest son, Vardaman, his innocence.
At the end of the novel we find the family burying their fish scented mother, that putrid corpse; Dewey Dell and her failed efforts to acquire an abortion; Cash badly injured with a broken leg; Darl gone insane; and Vardaman acquiring a new mother, because suddenly out of nowhere, Anse has gotten married. With money he has stolen and talked his way out of paying, he finally purchases his new set of dentures (teeth) and convinces another stupid woman to be his wife; we find Anse standing erect like the penis he is and proud of his new acquisitions: spouse and dentures. What I wasn't able to figure out is why Anse was so cold-hearted and indifferent towards his children. Through his selfishness, we see how Anse was capable of destroying his family's self-worth. His motives for cheating and lying were manifested with a smile full of teeth and a wife who looked like a goose. Anse was the main culprit in this family's dysfunction.
He was always thinking about what they could and would do for him, instead of what he should have done for them: become a responsible father. Bibliography:
Free research essays on topics related to: horse, cash money, dewey dell, ten dollars, anse
Research essay sample on Dewey Dell Ten Dollars
