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. Anse is loaded with faults and vices.

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" he repeats trying to avoid a doctor's fee.

Anse not only trades Jewel's horse without asking, but he also steals Cash's money. Later on he lies to his family saying that he spent his savings and Cash's money in the trade. "I thought him and Anse never traded," Armstid said. "Sho," they did "All they liked was the horse" Eustace a farmhand of Mr. Snopes said. Anse steels Cash's money and towards the end of the book he also takes ten dollars from Dewey Dell.

With money he has begrudged, stolen, and talked his way out of paying, he finally buys some new teeth and a new wife for the price of a graphophone. What defies explanation is why Anse is so cold-hearted and indifferent to his children? What has changed him from the hard working twenty-two year old man he once was.

Addie requests to be buried in Jefferson. When she does, Anse appears obsessed with burying her there. Even after Addie had been dead over a week, and all of the bridges to Jefferson are washed out, he is still de

Some common words found in the essay are:
Dewey Dell, Anse Anse's, Jefferson Anse, Jewel Darl, Addie's Anse, Lay Dying, Snopes Anse, Armstid Sho, cash's money, Instead Anse, drive wagon, wife money, jewel's horse, false teeth, lay dying, jefferson anse,
Approximate Word count = 641
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)