Anse Bundren

Character Key: 
Display Name: 
Anse Bundren
Sort Name: 
Bundren, Anse
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Male
Class: 
Lower Class
Rank: 
Major
Vitality: 
Alive
Occupation: 
Farming
Specific Job: 
Farmer
Narrator: 
Stream of Consciousness
Biography: 

Anse Bundren is a farmer by vocation, but he is perhaps more accurately described with a term Faulkner's fiction regularly applies to the Snopeses: parasite. Unlike Flem, however, Anse is rendered comically rather than as a threat to the social order. He is described as a "kind of tall, gaunted man" (203). Physically his most striking feature seems to be his hair; Peabody calls it "pushed and matted up . . . like a dipped rooster" (44). He narrates three chapters in which he portrays himself as both the victim of "bad luck" and "them" - the anonymous people who make his life so hard (36). His neighbors, however, and most readers instead see how successful he is at getting other people to do all his work for him. Darl observes, "I have never seen a sweat stain on his shirt. He was sick once from working in the sun when he was twenty-two years old, and he tells people that if he ever sweats, he will die" (17).

Note: 
With all of these farmers we are left with the question; are they tenant farmers or do they own their farms?? Is there any specific evidence in the text to suggest ownership or tenancy? After some discussion we have landed on falling them lowerclass (and therefore leaning toward owners) because of the way they talk about their land. The idea that he is financially dependent is interesting but I’m not sure applies – he is lazy but he still calls the shots within his poor little realm. physical impairment: back
Property Status: 
owns land
owns house
Financial Status: 
poor (controls limited wealth)
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/5655