Love And Greed In Addie's As I Lay Dying

As a person dies, it is up to those who love and cherish them to take care of them and their final wishes. It is an inherited right that all humans have upon their families, regardless of their sins and regrets. In As I Lay Dying, the Bundren family embark on a perilous journey to fulfill that wish for their beloved mother, Addie. Although they begin their trek in the sights of achieving her wish, they reveal their own selfish intentions. Besides burying her body, the Bundrens hope to accomplish their own goals. Therefore the reader can infer that the family is both betraying and honoring Addie. They all seek to bury her body in Jefferson; however the family members are motivated by their own personal desires. Each of the family members, including Addie, represent the seven deadly sins; pride, laziness, wrath, envy, gluttony, lust, and greed. Addie’s pride towards her family and her wishes to remain dignified and honored are ironic since she dirtied the Bundren name. By having an affair with Minister Whitfield, she threw …show more content…
Her incident with a farmer, Lafe, left her pregnant and embarrassed since she had no one else to communicate with about it. As the only remaining female in the Bundren household, Dewey Dell was forced to take upon the duties left by her late mother and her inability of aborting her unborn child. Addie was the only one she had felt comfortable talking to since she was someone she could easily relate to as a female, who’d experienced the same obstacles Dewey Dell was facing. She relates by saying "I heard that my mother was dead. I wish I had more time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had. It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon.” (Faulkner 120) She wished Addie had spent more time with her so that she could have her answers questioned, and someone to talk