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......
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