As I Lay Dying And Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard

The choices a parent makes before and during their child’s life strongly influences the future of the child and the choices they make as they grow older. William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and Natasha Trethewey's “Native Guard” both present characters whose lives are the way they are because of the decisions their parents made before they were born. Addie deceives her husband and truly only loves one of her kids and this affects the two youngest of the five kids the most. Trethewey’s parents get married illegally and she has to spend the rest of her life defending and justifying their decision.
The root of Anse and Addie’s problem with their marriage is that they never truly loved or trusted each other. A marriage based on lies and deceit

always ends in shambles and it’s usually the children who suffer the most from the decisions their parents made.Their actions affect all of their kids in one way or the other.

It is obvious throughout the novel that Addie favors Jewel and neglects her other children. After she cheated on Anse she felt great amounts of guilt and because of this she states, “I gave Anse Dewey Dell to negative Jewel. Then I gave him Vardaman the child I had robbed him of” (174). Dewey Dell and Vardaman were her way of making up for her infidelity and this is reflective of who Vardaman and Dewey Dell are and how they behave. Vardaman is often times confused and always trying to make sense of things and this is mostly because neither of his parents cared enough to explain the world to him so he comes with his own logical way of processing what is happening around him.Vardaman has had to make sense of everything by coming

up with his own theories and explanations for why his life is the way it is. Dewey Dell doesn’t know the first thing about how to handle her pregnancy and that’s mainly because Addie was never the best maternal figure for her and she never took the time to educate her about such things. After her mother dies Dewey Dell is more concerned about going to the city to get her abortion than she is about the fact that her mother is dead. Even though Dewey Dell was the only girl in her family she had no real close relationship with her mother and it’s safe to say she resented her for that her entire life.
Natasha Trethewey’s life revolves around the fact that her parents, a black woman and a white man, got married in Mississippi when it was illegal to do so.

Growing up during her time as a mixed race child brought along a lot of questions for Trethewey. Her mother grew up during a time when racism was at its worst and after all of it decided to marry a white man. The moment her parents decided to wed they put themselves and her in danger way before she was even born.At this time civil rights were expanding and changing and “already the words were changing. She is changing from colored to negro,black still years ahead.This is 1966-she is married to a white man- and there are more names for what grows inside her” (37). The decision Trethewey’s parents made affected her life and how society viewed her from the moment she was born into a country that was just learning to accept her mother. Trethewey spent her entire life in this “middle” where she didn’t know whether she should identify as black or as white. Her identity and her race determined how people looked at her and how they treated her. As a child she was very curious about the derogatory terms that followed her home everyday but “my mother cannot answer, her mouth closed, a gesture toward her future: cold lips stitched out” (40). Trethewey’s poetry shows her analyzing history and answering the questions she had that her mother could not answer for herself. For Trethewey, understanding and accepting history is the only

true way to advance into a future that one can be happy about.
Decisions that parents make can be very reflective in their children and this can either be a good or a bad thing. For me, my parents decision to leave family behind and flee Somalia in ‘92 provided me with a life many can only dream of having. They risked a lot for me and my siblings and for that we are grateful in everything that we do in order to repay them for their sacrifices. I would not be where I am today had my parents not sacrificed their families and put their lives in danger in order to escape the Somali Civil War. I can relate to Trethewey because both of our parents did what was frowned upon and gave us the best life that they possibly could and for that we are eternally grateful and will never forget how and why our lives are the way they are.