Analysis Of Anse Bundren In Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

In As I Lay Dying (1930), Faulkner creates the deceitful, insensitive character, Anse Bundren, who will do anything to get what he wants, even if it means stealing and injuring his own children, symbolizing the avarice and apathy that can result from a world of non education, poverty, and overall suffering.

Anse Bundren is depicted as a selfish character who puts his own goals before his family’s. For example, Anse easily steals away money and the goals of his children. He steals the money that Cash had been saving in order to get a graphophone, and sells Jewel’s horse in order to buy mules that were, in actuality, unnecessary. Ironically enough, both the horse and the graphophone are symbols that represent each of the boys’ freedom. Jewel’s

horse symbolizes his willful decision to separate himself from the Bundren family, working independently to buy the horse and riding it away from the family wagon.

Cash’s graphophone exemplifies order and balance alongside formosity that provides an artistic escape. The fact that Anse takes these away from the boys demonstrates his wicked person, and he is the only character that ends up getting his goal: teeth and wife. These goals can even be foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel when Kate Tull remarks that Anse will remarry. Anse believes that getting new teeth will help him achieve that, and his immoral characterization is what really helps him achieve that goal in the end. Teeth and a new wife are a goal that is further manifested in the New Hope Church allegory that provide a contrast to what the other characters now hope for after the death of their mother. Cash wants music, Vardaman wants a toy train, Dewey Dell wants an abortion, and

Anse wants to get a new wife, even if it means using his dead wife to do it. Honestly, not a few days after her death and Anse immediately beings looking for another woman to take care of his farm. Anse does anything to get what he wants, and unfortunately, not even what he wants can justify his blatant actions.
Additionally, Anse’s indolence and callousness toward his family lead to a shattered familial bond and the characters’ clandestine choices.

For instance, Anse’s laziness manifests in just the way Darl describes him; he doesn’t ever seem to sweat, and this seems to encompass his entire character. Anse’s idleness stretches outside of just working and into his mannerisms as a father. If Anse was truly a good fatherly man then it would be apparent through his own children - it’s not. That much is obvious through the way the children each seem removed from each other, through Darl’s relentless cruel teasing and their overall apathy toward one another. After all, at the end of the novel the children hardly raise a protest at the idea of Darl going to an insane asylum, watching indifferently from behind half-eaten bananas. What really makes Anse such a horrid character is his own hypocrisy. He constantly calls out the family for disrespecting Addie when he is really the one who disrespects her. This irony continues when he justifies everything he does as being ordained by God when all evidence points to the contrary. When Cash breaks his leg Anse would rather dump cement onto it than buy a new one, all the while lamenting his own bad luck and the fact that God would have this all happen to him. Also, the fact that each of the children keep such serious secrets draws attention to the fact that they hold no trust to each other, splintering apart without their mother because,

clearly, their father holds no parental affection or faith. Dewey Dell’s pregnancy can be seen by the reader through the author’s unique narrative conventions, and are able to witness her distrust in her family through the powerful imagery when describing her fear of Darl. Anse’s laziness leads to the shattering of familial bonds, painting him to be the unsupportive man that he really is.
Anse Bundren has no empathy for his own children’s hardships, putting his own needs before theirs and creating a dualisms between the family members that lead to secrets being formed and the overall disrespect of a dead mother.