William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

As a whole, those awarded with elevated monetary assets and possessions live a far easier life than their impoverished counterparts, often characterized by gross excess and indulgence. It is often expected that such privileged individuals work for the improvement of the general human condition, whether that be through philanthropy or activism. Specifically, these expectations have been long instilled in the wealthy American South, of which William Faulkner was a part. Born into an affluent family raised to the song of southern virtue, Faulkner hummed with charm and generosity, and he marched to the strict cadence of Christianity, his beliefs marking every step in his life.
Coming of age in the new century, he released his work As I Lay Dying

From the lack of understanding of the wealthy, to sexual assault on one of the Bundren children, the utter disregard for the poor by the rich is overwhelmingly clear. Miss Lawington, a relatively fortunate woman, demonstrates the outright neglect to the conditions of the her inferior neighbors. She requests of Cora Tull, a woman on the lower end of the economic spectrum, to bake several cakes for her. After completing this fairly expensive task, Miss Lawington cancels the order leaving Cora with the fact that “those rich town ladies can change their minds. Poor folks can’t” (Faulkner 7). The lack of awareness of people’s financial situations reinforce the idea that the top of the hierarchy disregards to problems of the bottom. The circumstances would be different if Miss Lawington revealed any sign of remorse for her actions, and how they influenced others fiscally. However, by the connotation of Faulkner writing, it appears that she cannot comprehend the magnitude of her actions. Another major example that embodies the true reflection of the rich is the intellectual exploitation of the family by the shopkeeper. When somebody tries to expose the shopkeeper as deceitful in his intentions for Dewey Dell, selling her inactive abortion treatment, he reacts with a string of sarcastic remarks such as “‘Hadn’t you hear about it? Maybe it’s because you aint never needed a doctor’ ‘I need one now,’ she says. ‘And you come to the right one’ he says” (Faulkner 245). This distracts the clearly distraught girl, which diverts her from seeing the obvious truth, and effectively swindling her into his sinister plan. Dewey Dell makes it clear that she has the money for the false treatment, but the rather wealthy shopkeeper has no interest in the money. Instead, he extorts her for his own personal gain, and the actions he does completely contradicts