In As I Lay Dying "Mr. Gillespie's boy" Mack helps his father and the Bundrens move Addie's coffin into the barn, and then later works to help save the Gillespies' livestock from the fire in the barn (216). During the fireVardaman notes that his legs "fuzz" in the moonlight (216).
In As I Lay Dying the second "Mrs. Bundren" is a "duck-shaped woman" (260) from whom Anse borrows shovels to bury Addie and then - to the shock of his remaining children - marries the next morning.
In As I Lay Dying, Vardaman is the fifth and youngest child of Anse and Addie Bundren. He narrates ten chapters in which we follow the progression of a child's grieving process after the death of a parent. He also reveals poignant and specific examples of the poverty in which he resides. He is described by the other narrators as very small. (Vardaman is named after James K. Vardaman, who served one term each as Mississippi's Governor [1904-1908] and Senator [1913-1919]; he was a militant white supremacist whom his supporters called "The Great White Chief.")
In As I Lay Dying, Jewel is Addie's third - and favorite - child, illegitimately conceived with Reverend Whitfield. We know he is "a head taller than any of the rest" of the family (17), and the other narrators often reference his eyes to describe the intensity of his nature; they "look like pale wood in his high-blooded face" (17). While the Bundren family has always had mules, he worked hard to acquire a horse, which he rides with pride and skill. Throughout the narrative he is quietly, though violently, angry.
Dewey Dell is the fourth child and only daughter of Addie and Anse Bundren in As I Lay Dying. Cora Tull calls her a "tom-boy girl" (8); several male characters comment on how "pretty" she is, "in a kind of sullen, awkward way" (199). Unknown to anyone but her brother Darl and Lafe, her sexual partner, she is pregnant and wants to go to Jefferson to get an abortion. She is able to communicate with Darl without words and she narrates four chapters in the novel.
Cash is the first-born of Addie and Anse Bundren in As I Lay Dying. He is a good carpenter, who shows his devotion to his mother through his handiwork. He narrates five chapters which become increasingly more developed, beginning with a list of the reasons he made his mothers coffin on the bevel and ending with the final chapter of the novel in which he conveys the denouement of the story in a straightforward, matter of fact way. He is compulsive about his tools, and his narration shows him to be single–minded as he tends to frame everything in the terms of his craft.
In As I Lay Dying, Anse's mother is mentioned in passing by Doctor Peabody. As he climbs the steep slope up to the Bundren house, Peabody wonders "how his mother ever got up to birth him" (42).
In As I Lay Dying, Addie tells Anse Bundren before they marry that "I have people. In Jefferson" - adding when he worries about what such "town folks" will think of him, that "they're in the cemetery" (171). Supposedly re-uniting Addie with her deceased family is the reason for the Bundrens' trek to that same cemetery, but the novel never mentions them again - not even when the Bundrens do finally get to the cemetery.
As at Ab Snopes' first (criminal) trial, at the second (civil) trial in "Barn Burning," in a second country store, there is again a crowd of men in attendance. Their faces this time are described as "quiet, watching" (17).
In attendance at Ab Snopes' trial for burning a barn are a group of men from the neighborhood. The narrative only describes them (three times in two pages) as a set of "grim faces," but their hostility to Snopes is unmistakable (4-5).
