As I Lay Dying explores obligation to the family as well as to honor and principles. But the story’s principle plot line – a family’s lengthy journey to town from the country – is essentially only masked by the guise of duty. Supposedly the trip is to honor the wishes of a dead woman, but the patriarch’s reasons are ultimately selfish. Familial obligations create resentment in more ways than one, most noticeably for the family’s matriarch, who despises her duty to have children and play wife to a husband she can’t stand.
Questions About Duty
- Why really drives Anse to Jefferson? We ventured that it might have something to do with those false teeth, but maybe we’re just cynical. What do you think – how seriously does he take his duty to his wife?
- Why does Tull help the Bundrens? He doesn’t really have a duty to…right?
- As I Lay Dying is full of characters persevering to accomplish what they think they need to do. From where do these various duties stem? Family? Religion? Morality?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.
Cash is the only Bundren to act according to the other family members’ wishes.
Each member of the Bundren family focuses on an artificial or trivial "duty" to distract himself from the pain of Addie’s death.