Addies Revenge Essay -- William Faulkner As I Lay Dying Essays

Addies Revenge In William Faulkners novel As I lay Dying the reader learns active each character through the eyes of that mortal so to speak. just ab aside of the important characters minds be revealed through the unique personalities and idiosyncrasies of the Bundren family, and those they encountered. One of the characters is Addie Bundren, the matriarch of the clan, and the person whos death this story moves upon. Although Addie is unfounded for most of the book, Faulkner still shows Addies feelings and attitude in a chapter in which she seemingly speaks from the inanimate. From this scene we learn about Addies personality. As a whole Addie is a pessimistic and unfulfilled wo gentlemans gentleman, who marries the ignorant Anse Bundren on a whim. Addie also admits for caring for only two of her children, the rest she labels Anses children, who are born out of an obligation. This obligation to Anse spawned from the fact that she had a son borne out of an affair with the priest Whitfield to bear her second child grace. As give tongue to before Addie is a bitter woman and believes Anse is to blame for many of her shortcomings. These shortcomings started that is to say with her unwanted birth to her second child Darl. Because of Addies bitter anger toward Anse, she curses Anse with her penalise, after(prenominal) death. Her punish involved telling Anse to take her body back to her hometown of Jefferson, which is a very long trip to make with a rotting dead body. Addie realizes that this will be an undignified, dangerous, and tedious consuming trip. Since Addie will be dead and gone her instinctive safeguard in this plan is her son Jewel who she prophesied would save her from the fire and the water and make sure she got to Jefferson. With Addies plan in motion and her safeguard in place, I believe Addie still could non punish the infantile but slick Anse Bundren despite Jewels instinctive effort, because of Anses inexplicable intelligenc e and improvisational skills. Anse Bundren seemingly the most country bumpkin you could ever work has at least one thing going for him. That is that he innocently knows how to play with peoples perceptions of him. When we see Anse for the first time it is explained to us that he does not work because he got sick once. This portrayal of Anse is of a sickly man who culls peoples sympathy. In another varying instance, on his way to Jefferson, Anse portr... ... Once once again everyone knows how old Anse is, how he cant sweat, and how he is therefore incapable of being grand and possibly getting hurt. And the way I believe Anse got total mastery over the late Mrs. Bundren is because he was able to stay safe because of his excuses, while the sons she loved in Jewel and Cash received the most cark in trying to uphold her plot. So even though Addie professes she doesnt care, I get the feeling that if she hadnt died before, the thought of her sons being injured and Anse escaping with new teeth, a new wife, and a new gramophone certainly would have killed her. In conclusion in spite of the fact that Anse is SLOW, LAZY, DISHONERABLE, HYPOCRITICAL and much more, he is not stupid, this is probably the common misconception. He is all of the above boot out stupid. Anse has proved that he is a bastard unto the world but not dumb. This is why I believe that Addie Bundren was not able to achieve her revenge against Anse despite Jewels best efforts. Because of Anses ability to manipulate people into believing he was something he was not, he was able to not only avoid Addies revenge but was also able to accomplish his goals in the process.