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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Title: As I Lay Dying
Approximate Word Count: 597
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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