The first problem of this novel is to understand why Addie makes Anse promise to carry her back to Jefferson. We discover early in the novel that she bore no love for her own family and, eventually, even hated her own father when she discovered the need for violence in order to achieve awareness. Thus we must assume that Addie made one more desperate effort to force an awareness of herself on her family. This difficult and arduous journey was to be her revenge on Anse, who had been only words, who had failed to help her achieve awareness, and who had never violated her aloneness. Addie even acknowledges that part of her revenge would be that Anse "would never know I was taking revenge." Thus Addie's request to be buried in Jefferson was made essentially for selfish reasons, in a last effort to prove that she was not just useless words.
For all Addie's efforts to force an awareness of herself upon the consciousness of her family, she partly fails. Anse is quite content to carry out the promise — not because it is a promise and not because of his respect or awe for the dead. People of the Bundren type have seen death too often to view it as other than an event in everyday life. But, "God's will be done . . . now I can get them teeth" is the extent of Anse's feelings. He lives only in the world of ineffectual words. Without the outside help of Samson, Armstid, Tull, and Gillespie, Anse would never have made it to Jefferson. Even then he has to steal from his own children in order to replace destroyed equipment.
