Selfishness In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Satisfaction at the expense of others, can one find any good in this? When an individual makes a selfish decision, they are thinking about themself. It is easy to think about oneself, but it takes more thought to realize how those selfish decisions affect others. These mostly negative effects are not hard to find because, although sometimes these cases are carefully planned, most scenarios with these decisions happen subconsciously. Our sinful nature makes it easy for us to put ourselves first. “As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner conveys this especially through the character, Anse. The father of the Bundren family refuses to work and insists the family take his deceased wife, Addie, to Jefferson with him to bury her with respect the way she

This is a clear excuse for Anse’s laziness and shows his selfish nature because he is making his children do his work for him. We see Anse’s laziness to do work affecting his children because they have to take on more responsibilities than they probably should. We also see Anse’s selfishness through his desire for new teeth. As soon as Addie dies, Anses says over her dead body, “‘Now I can get them teeth.” This hints to the idea that Anse has been waiting on Addie to dit to go to the city to get his new teeth. In addition to that, he steals Dewey Dell’s abortion money to buy himself the new false teeth once the family gets to Jefferson. Readers can assume that Anse’s wish for new teeth may be an ulterior motive for his anxiousness to get to Jefferson instead of wanting to bury Addie respectfully. Another example of Anse’s selfishness and an additional possible ulterior motive Anse might have had to get to Jefferson was to bring home a “new Mrs. Bundren.” As soon as the family gets to Jefferson and Addie is buried in the ground, Anse introduces his family to a new Mrs. Bundren. This makes it clear to readers that Anse had other reasons he wanted to go to Jefferson. Anse’s new teeth and new wife also explain why he pressured the family to cross the river when it was flooded and realistically too high to

Threatened by his step-son, Hamlet, Claudius sets up a plan to try to kill Hamlet. He enters Hamlet into a fencing battle, but puts poison on the end of his opponent’s foil. Just in case Hamlet does not make contact with the end of his opponent’s sword, Claudius puts poison in a cup of wine that will be handed to Hamlet if he wins the duel. In the heat of the battle, Hamlet and his opponent end up switching swords, killing Hamlet’s opponent instead of himself. In addition, Hamlet’s mother ends up drinking from the winner’s wine cup. Claudius tries to warn his wife half-heartedly saying, “Gertrude, do not drink,”(5.2.317) but his warning fails and she dies from poison anyways. Both Hamlet’s mother and his opponent die from these circumstances. This shows that Claudius’ selfish decision to attempt to kill Hamlet actually ended up affecting his wife and a