William Faulkner Barn Burning

Barn Burning William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" is a story of family loyalty verses social morality. The protagonist of Faulkner's story is a young boy named Sartoris Snopes, the son of a dirt-poor share-cropper who has spent the better part of his life moving from town to town and from shack to shack.

Set in the Deep South, "Barn Burning" is essentially a coming of age tale amid a violent family life that Faulkner uses to express that although family loyalty is an admirable quality, it does not justify silence against social crimes. There are several elements of symbolism in Faulkner's story. One that is repeated throughout his work is that of the description of the father, always "stiff and black" to symbolize the man's dark and sinister character and his unyielding personality.

The first description comes near the beginning of the tale when Faulkner writes, "His father, stiff in his black Sunday coat donned not for the trial but for the moving" (Faulkner pp). In that sentence Faulkner conveys to his readers not only a physical description of the man, but his purpose. Then again, when leaving the store, the author writes of the boy, "His father turned, and he followed the stiff black coat" (Faulkner pp).

This symbolizes the boy's obedience to his father, following the stiff blackness that dominated his life. The night before the family arrives at their new shack, having been run out of yet another town and county, the father takes the boy from camp for the purpose of instilling in him the duty of family loyalty.

Faulkner writes, "his father called him, and once more he followed the stiff back, the stiff and ruthless limp, up the slope and on to the starlit road where, turning, he could see his father against the stars but without face or depth -- a shape black, flat, and bloodless as though cut from tin in the iron folds of the frockcoat which had not been made lot him, the voice harsh like tin and without heat like tin" (Faulkner pp).

This appears to symbolize a turning point for the boy as he sees his father in his truest sense. It also moves the symbolism from merely a stiff back to a stiff gait, again reflecting the father's unyielding determination. Faulkner writes several passages reflecting the father's still gait. As the boy and his father are approaching the white house, "the boy remarked the absolutely undeviating course which his father held and saw the stiff foot come squarely down in a pile of fresh droppings" from a horse (Faulkner pp).

Then again as the father reaches the house, "Now he could hear his father's stiff foot as it came down on the boards with clocklike finality, a sound out of all proportion to the displacement of the body it bore" (Faulkner pp).

Then when the father enters the house, "the boy saw the prints of the stiff foot on the doorjamb and saw them appear on the pale rug behind the machinelike deliberation of the foot which seemed to bear (or transmit) twice the weight which the body compassed" (Faulkner pp). This symbolizes the father's determined course of action. The boy then saw the "stiff foot drag round the arc of the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear" (Faulkner pp).

The father had left his mark for the world to see. Near the end of the story Faulkner writes, "Then his father was gone, the stiff foot heavy and measured upon the boards, ceasing at last" (Faulkner pp). The boy at last had become his own person, his own man, his own being.

He too had determination, intent of action, and so the next morning when the boy awoke, "He was a little stiff, but walking would cure that too as it would the cold, and soon there would be the sun" (Faulkner pp). The boy was a man. The white mansion.