During our class discussion of As I Lay Dying, we frequently wondered whether any of the characters could be considered the hero of the story. As I recall, there was no real consensus. Anse is portrayed as weak, stupid, and emotionally manipulative, which makes me hesitant to deem him a hero even though he "wins" in the end. Darl is the primary narrator for most of the book, but his own opinions are almost never displayed, which makes him a rather empty hero. Cash and Jewel act in a very heroic manner during the river-crossing and barn-burning scenes, but they function more as scenery than fleshed-out characters for the rest of the story. Addie is dead, and Dewey Dell and Vardaman (the last members of the Bundren clan) seem too confused and childlike to be proper heroes. However, the Bundren journey does appear to follow the heroic arc described by Joseph Campbell (well, after a fashion...), from the refusal of the call to adventure to the supreme ordeal and final resolution. What hero, then, is completing the hero's journey?
I argue that As I Lay Dying does in fact contain a more satisfying hero, if we're willing to consider the three eldest Bundren siblings together. This isn't quite as strange as it may seem. According to Sigmund Freud, all psyches are comprised of three elements: the Id, Ego, and Superego. (Yes, I know that many of Freud's ideas were crazy and have been discredited, but this stuff is everywhere in popular culture and so I believe that the analysis is still valid. Just bear with me.) The Id represents one's basic instincts and raw emotions: the unconscious and disorganized drives for life and death. The Superego represents one's conscience and desire to conform to society's ideas of morality, and the Ego is a sort of middleman that comprimises between the contradictory demands of the Id and Superego. Although these elements are supposed to be pieces of an individual mind, they are often used to create characters in books and television shows. For example, in Star Trek, Doctor McCoy represents the Id with his angry outbursts, Spock represents the Superego with his emotionless logic, and Kirk mediates between them as the Ego. In the Harry Potter books, Ron, Hermione, and Harry fill the same roles respectively.
In As I Lay Dying, I think that the eldest Bundrens are also a Freudian trio. Cash is incredibly stoic and focused on doing things the "right" way regardless of the cost. After his leg is set with cement, he soundlessly faints from the pain after repeatedly saying "it don't bother none." This sort of emotionless calmness is characteristic of the Superego. Jewel is almost the exact opposite of this. His catchphrase is "Goddamnit" and he spends most of his time yelling angrily about either Addie or his horse. This wild, unconstrained emotion is very akin to that displayed by the Id. Although we never get much of a sense of personality from Darl, we do see that he is able to relate to both Jewel and Cash. He's almost like the ultimate Ego: he can see into everyone's heads and mediates between them with his clairvoyant narration. If we look at them as three parts of a whole, perhaps they could be the hero of the narrative. Jewel and Cash's heroic acts complement each other, and Darl provides them with a significant narrative voice. Notably, Cash becomes significantly more talkative after Darl breaks down at the end of the book, almost as if there were some sort of connection between their abilities to narrate the chapters. Although the Freudian trio is broken up with Darl's arrest, the conclusion could still seem heroic in the sense of an epic tragedy. Cash/Darl/Jewel was progressing along a heroic path, until all three aspects of them were damaged by Anse's selfish desire to operate without any sort of assistance. This is not unlike, say, Othello, who was heroic until Iago's evil tricked him into killing his own wife. What do all of you think about this? Is any individual character a hero in this story, do we need to look at some combination of them, or is there no hero at all?
