As I Lay Dying Anse And Howard Analysis

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People can be broken. Anse, in As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, and Howard, from “A Wagner Matinee”, live lives with very cold hearts. Both characters are unable to portray or feel any emotions other than callousness, selfishness, apatheticness and and are men who do not seem to show any empathy or emotion towards their family members, especially their wives.
Anse is broken to the point where his own children can not even look at him because of his callous behavior that they have had to deal with their entire lives. Now their mother is dead and Anse will not let anyone grieve. It is seen in, “He touches the quilt as he saw Dewey Dell do, trying to smoothe it up to the chin, but disarranging it instead. He tries to smoothe it again, clumsily, …show more content…

Having other character flaws, the trait of being selfish for example, makes it ten times harder to deal with that family member. Both Anse and Howard were very selfish people, very selfish husbands. "Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh, dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that." (Cather). Georgianna had been kept from her music for 30 years, and she misses it, yet her husband who obviously does not care about what she cares about, has kept and allowed her to be without what she loves most for so long. It is only when she visits her nephew that she realizes how much she wishes she could stay; stay with the music. Anse, on the other hand, knew his wife was very ill, yet instead of getting a doctor, he just let her die. "God's will be done," he says. "Now I can get them teeth." (Faulkner). Being selfish drove Anse’s and Howard's family members away and left them lonely and outcasts.
Both characters did infact face struggles of being awful people with awful qualities that no spouse or any family member should have to deal with. The difference between the two men is purely that Howard did in infact love Georgianna whereas Anse and his wife, Annie, had no love whatsoever anymore. Howard probably did not realize what he was doing hurting the ones he cared about much more subtly. In rough situations, Anse

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