This contains SPOILERS for the last TWELVE PAGES of the book!!
Throughout the story As I Lay Dying, there was a lot of question about whether Anse was on a noble journey or if he was just going to town for his own selfish reasons. It seemed at first like maybe he was being a good husband. At the beginning of the journey he makes a lot of reference to Addie having a “dying wish” to be buried in Jefferson. We later learn that Addie asked this as a type of torture from beyond the grave for her family, but Anse doesn’t know that. So at first I felt some pity for Anse, his wife had just died and he wanted to do one last romantic gesture for her.
Anse also made a big deal of his children “flouting the dead” by all wanting to go to town for their own reasons (like Cash and his carpentry job or Jewel and his horse). Meanwhile, we know that Anse is going to town because he wants to get himself a set of teeth. While this is an understandable need, it is hypocritical of him to be upset at his kids for doing the same thing he is. However, getting to town is hard so at this point in the story I still felt like maybe Anse was a character to feel sorry for, because he just was making efficient use of time in getting teeth while burying his wife.
Up until the point in the story when the Bundren’s arrive in Jefferson, the journey that they made could be seen as an expression of love for Addie, especially from Anse’s view. Anse continually says that they should keep going and not bury her in New Hope Cemetery and that it would be useless to turn back. It’s possible to interpret that behavior as a gesture of love and respect for Addie’s final wish to be buried in Jefferson. Once the family arrives in Jefferson, however, it is clear that Anse does not have Addie as a priority. He forgets the shovels necessary to dig her grave, and when he goes to borrow them from a house it takes him an exceptionally long time to retrieve them. Then, he tries to take even more money from his children and uses that money to buy himself a new set of teeth (and a gramophone for Cash).
The last thing we see in the novel is Anse walking out of the house where he returned the shovels with a woman who he declares is the new Mrs. Bundren. This is disrespectful to Addie in so many obvious ways, not only did he get a new wife on the same trip as burying his old one, but he married the new woman when getting shovels for Addie’s grave. This last moment of the book is definitely unexpected but gives one last shake to our whole perspective on Anse. He goes from being a potentially sympathetic character to a hypocrite who is “flouting the dead” in the biggest way possible. Overall, I think it would be hard to make a case that Anse was on a noble journey.
No. He is not redeemable. As you clearly point out, everything he does is hypocritical. I'm not surprised though. This whole story is full of frustrating irony, so why not just have a new wife at the end. The only thing that I was left wondering was the motivation for the new wife. Anse already has 5 children, and as we saw earlier in the book, he's going to make Dewey Dell do all the housework. So what's the point?
ReplyDeleteI don't think he is redeemable at all. Even when he supposedly sacrifices something for the journey he never actually does. For example, he gives up his money for new teeth, along with taking Cash's money and Jewel's horse, in order to get mules. Ignoring the fact that none of that was remotely necessary, in the end Anse just takes Dewey Dell's money to replace the money he "sacrificed".
ReplyDeleteI'm outraged at the ending of this book. Anse, while perhaps a dodgy and blockheaded character, was always self-noble in his cause and dedication to Addie. Before the ending, it WAS possible to see him as semi-heroic, even through the futility of his cause. But that ending wipes it all away.
ReplyDeleteI'm really not sure why he tried so hard to get to Jefferson, then, if he didn't love Addie much in the first place. Maybe his goal in going there was just to get a new wife, and he hid it from his narration? And how was he able to convince her to marry him that quickly? Maybe I'm just not reading careful enough, but it seems really sketchy to me.
Nice post. Yeah, wack. I was an Anse supporter for basically the entirety of the book, saying that he's performing a noble journey and stuff like that. But he basically grabs a rando in Jefferson and marries her. On the bright side, she has a "graphophone" that Cash has been trying to get for forever. On the flip side, he's totally flouting the dead. It's such a weird ending in many ways.
ReplyDeleteWoah, I completely missed the thing about Anse getting re-married. I thought he was referring to a relative, but now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure all of his are dead. That just made him even worse than I originally thought. In the beginning, I could understand why we could sympathize with Anse, but as the book went on it just got harder to as his ulterior motives for going to town were revealed.
ReplyDeleteI wanted so badly for Anse to be redeemable. I kept holding out for him to turn himself around but then as the end neared I felt Anse's fate for how I was going to judge him close in. Also, okay, wait, I'm not sure they even MADE it to Jefferson since Darl has to "go to Jefferson". Which makes Anse even more pathetic. Also, his scene at the end where he's drilling Dewey Dell and then takes her money made me hate him so much. He really makes the wrong decisions for his family. When he kept refusing help from people was a stellar example of Anse for me: he thinks he's being noble and doing what he should do but he's actually starving his children and doing the exact wrong thing. I'm not a big fan of Anse and it irked me to no end that he got the "happiest" ending.
ReplyDeleteThey made it to Jefferson, Darl had to go to Jackson, the mental asylum
DeleteI truly, truly, truly do not understand why Faulkner chose to give the happiest ending to the WORST, MOST HYPOCRITICAL character, unless he just likes torturing me. I've admittedly hated Anse for the majority of the book, so my views might be a little skewed - but I totally agree with your depiction of Anse here. Worst for me was Anse's continual moral judgements on his children (who I actually liked) for acting "disrespectfully," only to completely surpass them all, while keeping all of his moral superiority. ARGH!
ReplyDeleteNice post. AI agree that Anse is not redeemable. However, I wouldn't agree that Anse's intent to get teeth is hypocritical. Partly, I would say its because while that Cash trying to fix Tull's barn roof, Dewey Dell selling cakes to Ms. Tull, and Jewel riding apart from the family on his horse, those are not going to actively affect their livelihood or the funeral. However, Anse is missing his bottom pair of teeth, which is, to say the least, quite difficult to live with. In addition, I think that in part, he wants a set of teeth in order to look his best for when he buries Addie, which he ends up doing afterwards anyway. But that might be Representative of him moving on, maybe of him putting 2 and 2 together. We will never know what caused such a sudden shift in Anse, but I think there may be a greater underlying cause than hypocrisy.
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