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Essay Archive - As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying
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 i....
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