The Journey of No Heroes

     The book As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner seems to have a hero's journey style narrative but at the same time it seems to really test the boundaries of what classifies a hero as a hero. There is no clear "main character" of the book, who would normally be classified as the hero on the journey, and none of the characters that do exist in the book have heroic qualities. All members of the Bundren family have their own selfish reasons for going on the journey, which were ignited by the death of Addie. The characters that I think are most interesting to analyze in this sense are Jewel, Anse, and Cash.

    We do not see much from the perspective of Jewel but we can tell a lot about him from other people's chapters. Throughout the book he has been written as distant and aggressive, and is very independent. He does not ride with the others on the wagon, instead opting to ride separately on his horse. He is often viewed by the neighbors as strange too, compared to Darl a lot. Jewel also stands out within the family itself for his abnormal height and the fact that he is the child of an affair that Addie had with Whitfield. His lack of heroics is most prominent in the Armstid chapter when he abandons his family after Anse reveals he tried to give away his horse. He chose to hold his grudge over being there to honor his mother.

    Anse in my opinion is one of the least heroic of the Bundrens. While he initially seems dead set on granting Addie her dying wishes, a lot of outsiders just see him as crazy and dishonoring her. Mostly people's wives find Anse's actions to be outrageous and wrong. Additionally, he tends to overlook his kids in favor of fulfilling this wish. When Cash broke his leg again, he refused to leave him to heal, and he tried to sell Jewel's horse without his knowledge even though he had no claim over it, and stole Cash's money he was saving too. He also had ulterior motives to go to town to get himself teeth. Tangentially related is the fact that Anse and Addie's marriage was already strained before she died, so while it doesn't directly prove Anse isn't heroic, it begs the question of how much he truly cares to do this for her. 

    Lastly is Cash, and while he seems selfless and the most dedicated to Addie, he doesn't exactly seem like a hero either. While he is always focused on something other than himself, he is very quiet and reckless, which isn't the qualities you would expect someone, especially an oldest child and "hero" to have. He has broken his leg twice in reckless accidents, and rarely finishes his sentences, even in his standard narration style. He also has a tendency to seem focused on very specific things (like his tools or the coffin being on a balance), which takes away from the bigger picture and interconnectivity that is suggested by animal magnetism, which is another common theme of the book. Overall, there are no characters that can be directly identified as a hero, because even the most heroic among them don't seem to have what it takes.