William Faulkner: Barn Burning Although

William Faulkner: Barn Burning

Although William Faulkner stood less than 5'6" tall, he is considered a giant among American writers. Although he never graduated from high school, did not earn a college degree, and grew up in the poorest state in the union, he accomplished a great deal. He became a Nobel Prize winner, a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter and made a small area of Mississippi (his "postage stamp") famous. Faulkner's view of human nature was pessimistic, often on the sinister side. He explored the dark side of life in his characters who perhaps were sometimes drawn from his own shadow self. However, there is little in his childhood and upbringing to explain his negative outlook or to predict his enormous talent.

Born in 1897 the oldest of four children, Faulkner grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, where his grandfather owned the bank. At age 13 he started writing poems. He dropped out of school and worked at his grandpa's bank for awhile (William Faulkner web site), arriving at manhood during the first World War. When he couldn't get in the U.S. Army because he wasn't tall enough, in 1918 he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in Canada. In an effort to pass himself off as British, he lied about several things on his application, including his age and birthplace. When he talked to British officers he affected an English accent (whether he did the accent well enough to fool them, we do not know), and he changed the spelling of his name from Falkner to Faulkner because he thought it looked more British (MWP: William Faulkner web site).

Faulkner began learning to fly in Toronto, but unfortunately (from his point-of-view), the war ended before he was done with training. But he made the best of things. Once discharged, he bought himself an officer's dress uniform and sewed wings on the breast pocket. He came home in the uniform of an RAF lieutenant and also let folks think he had been in combat. For awhile, he basked in the glory of a war hero. In an early show of inventive genius, he made up colorful stories about his adventures as an officer. Part of the story was that his plane was shot down, he was in constant pain from his war injuries, and had a metal plate in his head. Later, his brief service would appear in his first novel (MWP: William Faulkner web site).

Faulkner studied literature for three semesters at University of Mississippi. During that time his first published poem appeared in The New Republic. He published poems and short stories in The Mississippian, the campus newspaper. He helped to form a drama club on campus and wrote a one-act play. Even after he left school he continued sending poems and prose pieces to The Mississippian. In 1921 he got a job in New York City at a bookstore where Elizabeth Prall, who later married the writer Sherwood Anderson, was manager. He returned home and from 1922 to 1924 was postmaster at University of Mississippi, but he wasn't cut out for the job. He read too much and played cards with his friends, misplaced and lost the mail, and did not serve the customers. A postal inspector investigated complaints about him, and he agreed to resign (MWP: William Faulkner web site).

In 1924 a book of Faulkner's poetry was published, but it was not successful. The following year he moved to New Orleans where Sherwood Anderson convinced him to try fiction instead of poetry. Faulkner published several essays and sketches in The Double Dealer (a literary magazine) and wrote his first novel Soldier's Pay about a returning soldier who was physcially and psychologically wounded in the war. After the book was accepted for publication, he went to Europe and stayed several months near Paris. When he returned, he started writing from his memories of life in the South where he had grown up -- the people and culture, the look of it, the sounds and smells, all the sensory details of animal and plant life. It was truly a turning point: "Beginning with Sartoris," he wrote, "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it..." (Lion in the Garden 255). Indeed, Fennell (1999) states: "Faulkner's fictional world is easily recognized as a 'land haunted by memory' (Gray 231, cited in Fennell 35). Yoknapatawpha County, his fictional area in Mississippi, is Lafayette County. But the word haunted is the key word here, for his stories are never happy ones. They have authenticity, however, despite the sometimes bizarre happenings and sinister events. His characters think and talk like real people and experience the impact of poverty, racism, class divisions, and family as both a life force and a curse. Faulkner wrote in the oral tradition. His "writing shows a keen awareness of the regional sounds of language and speech" (McDonald 46).

An example is "Barn Burning," a short story about a boy whose angry and abusive father is mentally ill and burns down the barns of people he envies and hates. The family is dirt poor and constantly has to move. The farmers his father works for own property so there is constant tension between rich and poor. Unlike Hightower, the male character in Light in August, an impotent man who seeks to restore his masculine potency (Morgan 368), Abner, the father in "Barn Burning" lusts for the power that only a big fire can give him. He deliberately incites the anger of affluent men so that he can get even and, thus, gain some temporary sense of power for himself. For example, he purposely tracks horse manure onto the rich farmer's expensive rug and then, when ordered to clean it, deliberately ruins the rug with lye. When the judge fines him $5 worth of corn from his crop to pay for the damage, he has an excuse to burn down his employer's barn. Sarty, the son, hates his father on one hand but feels connected to him on the other and is afraid to oppose him. His mother and aunt, decent but down-trodden women, are too dependant and helpless to have any influence on the father. Sarty's two sisters are too fat, stupid, and "indolent" to care. The older brother seems to be a "chip off the old block," particularly when he suggests that his father better "tie up" Sarty to keep him from ruining their plan to burn down the barn. In the end Sarty tells on his father and runs away from home. Obviously, he can't go back. Afterwards alone in the woods, he grieves for the lost relationship of father and son: "Father. My father" (p. 24).