Anse Bundren Essay

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Anse Bundren is an uneducated farmer whose selfish tendencies in his personality result in poor parenting and relations with others. Anse is extremely selfish as well as stubborn and throughout the book he butts heads with the other characters. For Anse his wife's death is just bad luck and he seems only to feel bad for himself, not for the loss of her. Even his intentions for her burial are laced with selfishness because he will acquire a new set of false teeth. Anse’s exaggerated traits of selfishness distance him from the other characters and others tend to dislike him because of his self-centered personality. Anse is even too stubborn to call a doctor for his own wife until it is obvious that she is desperate. Peabody says, “I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone. And I knew that if it had finally occurred to Anse himself that he needed one, it was already too late.” (42) Peabody highlights Anse’s stubbornness in this passage and shows just how unwilling to adapt and help others he is. The other characters are bothered and annoyed by the grievances of Anse, and his neighbors such as Tull view Addies death and Vardaman’s actions as “A judgment on them. I see the hand of the lord upon this boy for Anse Bundren’s judgment and warning.” (72) Tull thinks that Anse deserved what he got and that the way he acted warranted the “judgment” passed by god. Anse’s dialect is another part of his personality that is very unique. It is obvious from his speech that he is uneducated and “country”. This lack of education could partly be an explanation for his selfishness, because he has never had the exposure to things other than what he knows in his own small world. When death rocks Anse’s small world he is unfazed and continues his selfish behavior, even going so far as to bury Addie in Jefferson simply for his own

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