Anse's Journey

There has been a lot of discussion in class over whether or not the journey the Bundrens take can be see as a heroic journey, and whether or not Anse can be seen as a hero in the story. Personally, I think that Anse turns out to be a very selfish character and isn't much of a hero at all, and the Bundrens' journey is more of a series of misfortunes than anything heroic.

I do respect Anse for his desire to take Addie all the way to Jefferson. Even though they weren't very close at all while she was alive, he did really try to love her and wanted to respect her memory by honoring her last wish. He even overcomes his great fear of moving to set off on the journey, which I suppose can be seen as heroic in a way. However, it's not the intention that makes Anse not a hero, it's more the way that he goes about leading this journey that's the problem.

Anse proves to be an extremely selfish and stubborn man. He refuses to give up when almost any normal person would, which does show good perseverance but also causes Addie's body to rot and people to disrespect him for what he's doing to her. The worst part of Anse though, is the way that he endangers and hurts many of the other members of his family while on the journey. Anse refuses to do any work himself and makes the others do it, often putting them in danger as we see during the river crossing. As a result of continuing the journey, Cash breaks his leg and nearly dies, Jewel is almost killed in a fire, and Darl is sent to an insane asylum. If Anse had just given up on the journey when it started to become more and more dangerous, he could have saved his family a huge amount of trouble.

One other bad trait of Anse is that he appears to be extremely selfish. We know that a side motive for his trip to Jefferson is to get some false teeth on the way, and we know that many of the other characters have secondary goals as well. Anse seems to prioritize his goals over those of the others, which is best shown in how he buys the new mules. First of all, this trade is only necessary because he's being ridiculously stubborn in refusing Armstid's offer to use their mules. He trades away some family equipment, Cash's money, and Jewel's horse without asking anyone about it. He does throw in some of his money he'd been saving for his teeth, but this isn't overly impressive as he steals Dewey Dell's money to replace it later in the book.

Finally, the moment at the end of the book where he returns with a new wife makes the entire journey just seem sort of dumb. Anse, after all of his talk about not wanting to disrespect Addie, and after dragging all of his children through an insane, dangerous, painful journey that nearly killed two of them and got one of them locked up, turned out to just have wanted to go to town to get some new teeth and a new woman. Not very heroic at all.