What happens in Chapter 43 of As I Lay Dying?
The chapter is told from the perspective of Armstid, a neighbor who has taken in the Bundren family. Anse keeps haggling over a mule team, rejecting Armstid's offer of his own mules, claiming that Addie would prefer to travel in the family's wagon. Jewel rides to the Bend to get Peabody but comes back with Uncle Billy instead. Billy sets Cash's broken leg by lamplight while Cash endures the pain until he eventually faints. Afterward, Cash finds comfort with his tools placed within reach under the bed. The next morning, buzzards start circling and landing on the barn roof where the coffin is; Vardaman chases them while Jewel becomes furious and tries to move the wagon by himself, refusing help from Darl and Armstid. Anse rides off to trade with Snopes and returns looking sheepish. When pressed by Darl and the others, Anse confesses he mortgaged his cultivator and seeder, used Cash's eight dollars meant for a talking machine, and traded Jewel's horse—all to buy a mule team. Jewel silently walks to the horse, gets on it, and rides away at full speed down the road. Armstid again offers his team, but Anse declines. The family moves the wagon about a mile from the house and camps there overnight, turning down Armstid's food and hospitality. The next morning, Eustace Grimm arrives from Snopes with a mule team, explaining that someone left a horse in Snopes's barn overnight. Armstid figures that Jewel must have returned the horse anonymously to finalize the trade and thinks that despite everything, Anse has a knack for making men feel obligated to help him.
Analysis
Armstid shares his story in a simple, drawling first-person voice that combines dry humor with genuine moral insight. His speech includes phrases like "I be durn," "I reckon," and "sho," creating the rhythm of a reluctant observer—someone who keeps witnessing events he can hardly believe. The chapter unfolds through a series of escalating revelations: first about the mortgaged farm equipment, then Cash's savings, and finally Jewel's horse. Faulkner frames this as an interrogation scene where Anse mumbles and glances downward, while his sons and Armstid press him for answers. This evasiveness serves to characterize Anse; his body language—arms hanging loosely, eyes sliding down to their feet and up their legs but not higher—reveals guilt without any acknowledgment.
Jewel's departure is portrayed through vivid imagery of motion: "some kind of a spotted cyclone," with horse and rider already moving before he's fully settled. The stillness that precedes this, with Jewel gazing out over the field "his face still as a rock," makes his explosive exit even more striking.
The buzzards symbolize the ongoing pressure throughout the chapter: circling, landing on the coffin, and pushing the family's crisis into public view. Lula's repeated cry—"It's a outrage"—carries the weight of communal judgment, while Armstid quietly deflects it.
The chapter concludes with an ironic twist: Jewel, believed to be gone for good, actually delivers his horse to Snopes anonymously, completing the trade himself. This reframes his furious ride not as an act of abandonment but as a sacrifice, prompting Armstid to reflect on Anse's peculiar knack for drawing help from others.
Key quotes from Chapter 43
“They went out of sight that way, the two of them looking like some kind of a spotted cyclone.”
Armstid describes Jewel riding away at full speed after learning Anse traded his horse, near the end of the confrontation scene.
“It’s his tools,” she said.”
Dewey Dell relays to the room what Cash is trying to say after regaining consciousness following Uncle Billy setting his leg.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Chapter 43
- horse-physic
- A rural term for veterinary medicine or remedies intended for horses, used here dismissively to suggest a doctor who treats animals as much as people.