What happens in Chapter 7 of As I Lay Dying?
Chapter 7 is told from the perspective of Anse Bundren, the family patriarch, whose narration showcases a talent for self-serving justification. Anse contemplates his circumstances—the road that was built past his house, which he blames for every unfortunate event that has befallen the family, including Addie's illness. He expresses his belief that God never intended for men to travel, viewing roads as a violation of the natural order. He insists that the sweat produced by movement is somehow inferior to the sweat from honest work done in one place. He fixates on his toothlessness, his inability to sweat, and the humiliations of his poverty, portraying each struggle as something inflicted upon him rather than something he has caused. The chapter is short yet packed with meaning: Anse lists his complaints against fate, neighbors, and chance while Addie lies dying inside the house. His self-pity is complete and, importantly, devoid of irony from his perspective. He brings up his need for new teeth and the promise of acquiring them in Jefferson—a detail that subtly hints at his true motivation for the upcoming journey.
Analysis
Faulkner gives Anse a voice that evokes both pity and condemnation, with the skill lying in what Anse fails to recognize about himself. His initial reasoning—that roads contradict God's design by promoting movement—creates a closed, circular theology aimed at justifying his inaction, and Faulkner never confronts it head-on; the absurdity is embedded in the structure rather than directly critiqued. This chapter acts like a character X-ray: everything Anse says is technically about suffering, but that suffering is always passive and external. Addie is dying just rooms away, and Anse's monologue hardly acknowledges her; the emotional emptiness is intentional.
Faulkner also employs Anse to introduce the theme of the body as a burden. His toothlessness, inability to sweat, and the assertion that God "made the sweat" for those who remain still—these traits connect him to the novel's broader focus on flesh, decay, and the humiliation of physical existence. While Darl's sections are poetic and Jewel's are dynamic, Anse's writing is flat, repetitive, and circular, reflecting his stalled moral imagination. The detail about his new teeth contains Faulkner's sharpest irony: the man who philosophizes against movement is already planning a journey, and doing so for himself. The chapter's tone is tragicomic—Anse is too consistent in his self-deception to be entirely tragic, yet too miserable to be merely comic.
Key quotes from Chapter 7
“I am the chosen of the Lord, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth. But I be durn if He don't take some curious ways to show it, seems like.”
Anse opens his monologue by framing his poverty and misfortune as divine favour, immediately establishing the self-serving theology that governs his entire worldview.
“Nowhere in this sinful world can a honest, hardworking man profit. It takes them that runs stores and lives off of usury and them that has the town to live in.”
Anse rehearses his grievances against commerce and town life, positioning rural poverty as moral virtue while quietly revealing his resentment of those who have more.
“And now I got to go on and get them teeth. That's what I got to do.”
The chapter's closing note plants Anse's true motivation for the Jefferson journey—new teeth—undercutting every high-minded rationale he has offered for the trip.