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 …showed first 75 words of 657 total…

…showed last 75 words of 657 total…his family. His motives for cheating and lying range from the greed of money to self pity. Instead of what can I do for them Anse will always be the one thinking what can they do for me. Works Cited Bleikasten, Andre. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press, 1973. Howe, Irving. William Faulkner: A Critical Study. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975. William, Faulkner. As I Lay Dying. New York: Random House, 1985.