In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner uses the characters Anse and Cash, as well as a motif/symbol in "My Mother is a Fish", to reveal the context psychological and societal problems of the 1920s and 1930s, written at the start of the stock market panic in 1929, Faulkner is said to have “taken one of these [onion] leaves, unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen, and wrote in it. top in blue ink: "As I lay down dying. Then he underlined it twice and wrote the date in the upper right corner. "(Atkinson 15) We must be careful to recognize Faulkner not as an apathetic man. , but as a man of great compassion and outrage at the collapse of America's economic foundations. This is essential to appreciate the great care with which he describes the desolation and impoverished landscape of Yoknapatawpha County, where As I Lay Dying takes place. Faulkner personifies the crippling effect of the Great Depression through Anse, particularly his inability to sweat. after a heat stroke in his youth, because of his multifaceted character, “I never saw a sweat stain on his shirt. He was sick once from working in the sun when he was twenty-two, and he told people about it. if he sweats he will die, I suppose he believes that” (Faulkner 17). When Anse takes another wife, he reinforces the psychological need of those affected by the Great Depression to be able to turn the page and forget the troubled times (a certain Freudian repression). As the passage above shows, no one has ever seen Anse sweat, and Anse goes so far as to inform people of the possible fatality that sweating can cause, whether people believe it or not. We see quite clearly that throughout the novel, no one believes that Anse cannot be...... middle of paper...... he is the "fish". This is why As I Lay Dying was written, to provide a context for those who are seemingly indifferent and apathetic to stop being hypocrites and start helping their neighbors. Works Cited Atkinson, Ted. “The Ideology of Autonomy: Form and Function as I Die.” Faulkner Journal 21.1 (2005): page nr. Gale Library Resources. Internet. April 18, 2010. Faulkner, William. As I was dying. 1930. Edited by Noel Polk. New York: Vintage, 1985. Print. Hewson, Mark. "'My Children Were Mine Alone': Maternal Influence in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying." Mississippi Quarterly 54.4 (2001): 595-95. Gale Library Resources. Internet. April 18, 2010.Rita, Rippetoe. “Unstained shirt, stained character: reread Anse Bundren. » Mississippi Quarterly 54.3 (2001): page no. Gale Literary Resources. Internet. April 18. 2010.