Grant is the Hero

I think that Grant is the journeying hero in this novel, not Jefferson.  He is the one who is given the heroic task of  making Jefferson a man.  He takes the classic Campbell path of resisting the call at first, dragging his feet at every step when getting access to Jefferson.  However, he does accept the call eventually and starts to teach Jefferson despite the fact that he seems to be a little overwhelmed by the challenge.

"What do you plan on doing when you come up there —if I let you come up there?" Guidry asked me.
"I have no idea, sir," I told him.

This conversation shows how Grant does not really know what he is trying to teach to Jefferson, much less how he will go about teaching it.  He has an idea of what Ms. Emma wants, but does not seem very certain about why she wants him to spend time with Jefferson.  The fact that he continues on this journey despite this uncertainty is a sign of his heroism.

Grant is also the one who changes the most during this novel.  In the beginning, he is an educated but sort of naive man who doesn't recognize the cycle he helps to perpetuate.  However, because of the challenge that Jefferson presents him with, he comes to realize that the black community is trapped in a cycle of ignorance and oppression.  His part in the oppression becomes apparent to him when the superintendent visits his school and looks at all the children's teeth while they stand in perfect lines just like he taught them to.  

"Rise," Irene called to the class.
They came to their feet, their heads up, their arms clasped to their sides. But instead of feeling pride, I hated myself for drilling them as I had done.

This is when he starts to see how he himself is part of the power structure that has put Jefferson in prison on purely circumstantial evidence.  In the follow chapter he begins to see what his old teacher meant when he said that attempts to change the situation were futile.  Grant realizes just how continuous this cycle is while he watches his students chop wood for the winter.

And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all?  They are acting exactly as the old men id earlier.  They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives.  Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?

It is in this moment that he makes the transition from being a passive school teacher who plays along with the system to someone outside the system who sees it for what it is.  This is what sets him apart from the other characters in this book and what makes him a hero.

Anse's Role

One way to explain the plot in As I Lay Dying is to consider that the driving force behind the plot might be the reader's inevitable disgust with Anse.  He is just a bad human being.  First of all, he is lazy, and I find his excuse of dying if he sweats a little too convenient and unlikely.  He pretty much forces his wife and children to do all the work of running his farm, and just sits around on his porch all day rubbing his hands and trying to look pitiful.  At this early point in the novel, the reader must begin to dislike Anse, and one thing that keeps them reading is a search for more justification for this hate.  They don't have to wait long for more evidence.

The point of the journey he forces the family to take is supposedly to honor his wife's wish to be buried in her family plot, but for Anse this burial takes second priority to getting himself a pair of dentures.  In fact, nothing else seems remotely important to him.  In the process of getting his teeth, he harms all of his children.  First, Cash's leg is broken while he tries to get Anse's wagon across the river.  Then, because of Anse's cheapness and incompetence, Cash's leg is set in cement which takes several layers of skin with it upon removal.  Cash may never walk again. As the story progresses, the list of Anse's self-serving acts grows long and the damage to his family increases, driving the plot forward and keeping the reader wanting more.

Another result of Anse's stubbornness in crossing the river is that both of their mules are drowned, and Anse refuses to borrow the mules offered to him. To buy new ones, Anse trade's away all of Cash's money and Jewel's prized horse, as well as an insignificant amount of his own possessions.  By Cash's interpretation, this unfairness is what causes Darl to set the barn on fire as he sees it as making things more even.  So, indirectly, Anse is responsible for Darl being sent of to an institution as well.

Finally, when they get to Jefferson, Anse guilt-trips Dewey Dell into giving up the ten dollars she had received to pay for her abortion.  Having stolen from and hurt all his childern who made his journey possible, Anse buys his teeth, becoming the only Bundren to get what they wanted out of the trip.  Also, he takes a new wife just hours after burying Addie.  This conclusion of the novel caps off a buildup of increasingly disgusting things that Anse has done, and thus serves as a relatively satisfying conclusion of the book.

Do you think this interpretation of the plot makes sense?  Can we view this book as driven by hate of the central character?