Barn Burning
William Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" was published in 1939. The setting and mood of the story reflect the Great Depression, and class conflict is at the heart of the "Barn Burning." "Barn Burning" is about a family of poor farm workers, and the interpersonal conflicts that arise due to their lowly station in life. The Snopes family consists of Colonel Sartoris (Sarty) who is the protagonist of "Barn Burning." His father Abner Snopes can be described as the antagonist. Abner Snopes has a habit of taking out his frustration and anger on his landlords by burning down their barns. The story opens in a courtroom in which Snopes is on trial, and he expects his son to lie about the barn burning in order to protect him. In "Barn Burning," the central conflict is between father and son; the central complication happens when Satry deliberately ruins the rug…...
Barn Burning
In Faulkner's "Barn Burning," the reader is presented with the inner experiences of a ten-year-old boy struggling to overcome the amoral and violent family culture into which he has been born. The boy's relationships with most of his family seem to be entirely overshadows, if not made non-existent, in comparison to his relationship with his father. In a rather Freudian sense, young Sarty must seek to come to terms with his mixed love and hatred for his sociopathic father, and learn to separate his own identity from that of his sire. In many ways, Sarty is indeed his father son and has a lot in common with him, yet on the other hand he is morally distinct and very much his own person.
Both Sarty and his father seem to have very passionate and uncontrolled natures. Sarty's passion is evident both in his chaotic and occasionally melodramatic thoughts (which the…...
It is important to notice the fact that despite the pressures from his father he decides to make his own choice and confront him. Therefore, the short story closes as a perfect circle with a somewhat similar action, this time the outcome differing. Thus, while in the beginning, Sarty would have lied for his parent, under the obligation of the Court, this time it was his own unquestionable choice to take a stand against the actions of his father. It is here that the transformation is obvious. He decides to choose the abstract morality of social institutions at the price of the alienation from his family. The final sentence, "He did not look back" seals his choice and opens up the path for his new quest.
Sarty's change in attitude and perception are resented to the reader with the help of two important elements: the narrator and the general setting…...
mla
Bibliography
Bertonneau, Thomas "An overview of "Barn Burning," in Exploring Short Stories, Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.
boy afraid? Why is the father able to escape punishment?
At the beginning of the story, Abner Snopes is being tried for the burning of a barn that belongs to the man on whose land he is a sharecropper. The boy, Abner's son Sarty, is afraid because he is the lone eyewitness who could potentially testify against his father. In some sense, Sarty's fear is the tipoff to the court that Abner did commit the arson, even though there is no incrimination -- without incrimination Abner is able to escape punishment for the felony of arson, but is nonetheless ordered to leave the county.
Why is the father, Abner Snopes, so angry with all of his employers? Why does he burn barns? Why is fire his weapon?
Snopes's rage seems to relate to his status as a sharecropper: a man who owns no land or property, but who is permitted to exist…...
Barn Burning" by illiam Faulkner and "here are You Going, here Have You Been?" By Joyce Carol Oates are coming of age stories that detail the lives of their adolescent protagonists. These stories reveal the strained relationships that adolescents have with their parents at the juncture of critical identity formation. Both Faulkner and Oates exhibit what Zender calls a "self-consciously ambiguous approach to motive" that creates "a pleasing sense of heightened tension, of thickness of texture, and of multiplicity of perspective" that makes their respective short stories pop and shine. It is the central external conflicts in "here are you Going, here Have You Been?" that help drive rich character development in these short stories. These stories show how adolescents, whose mind and identity remain malleable and not completely clarified, react to their primary role models: their parents. It is the conflict between dysfunctional adult and curious child that…...
mla
Works Cited
Wegs, Joyce M. "Don't you know who I am?' The Grotesque in Oates's 'Where are you Going, Where Have You Been?'" The Journal of Narrative Technique. Jan 1975. 5(1): 66-72.
Zender, Karl F. "Character and Symbol in 'Barn Burning.'" College Literature 16(1): 48-59.
Barn Burning
William Faulkner's story "BARN BURNING"
"Barn Burning": Annotated Biliography
Brown, Calvin S. (1962). Faulkner's geography and topography. PMLA, 77 (5):
Retrieved: http://www.jstor.org/stale/460414
Topography and spacial relations have a uniquely important role in William Faulkner's literary works. Faulkner's works are often interpreted as literal depictions of his life growing up in Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner's stories such as "Barn Burning" are located in the American South and derive much of their character and atmosphere from the social dynamics of that region. "Barn Burning" could not take place anywhere else ut the South, given the importance of southern mores in the plot and motivation of the story. Space within Faulkner's novels is also important, as manifested in the physical distance and differences etween the home of the plantation owner and his sharecroppers.
Gold, Joseph & Faulkner Fox. (1962). The "normality" of Snopesism: Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 3 (1): 25-34 Retrieved:
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stale/1207378
This article discusses what the authors…...
mla
bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, May 7, 1999. Transformations, 12(2), 41-
This essay describes the experience of teaching Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" to students in China. "Barn Burning" describes the moral conflict felt by Abner Snopes, "a poor sharecropper who takes out his frustrations against the post-Civil War aristocracy by setting fires to barns" (Speirs 2001). Abner's son Sarty is torn between filial loyalty and loyalty to higher moral ideals. Many members of the new, rising Chinese generation feel a similar conflict between choosing between the morality of their parents in the spirit of Confucianism and their need to create a new identity. During the author's teaching of the short story, the Chinese embassy was bombed, which further provoked questions of when revenge should be undertaken. Faulkner presents class rage, however justified, as creating an inevitable cycle of violence that must be ended by the new generation.
Barn Burning
illiam 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…...
For the others, leaving the family is literally unthinkable.
In many ways, Abner is also symbolic. His anger comes from perceived injustices committed against him. In the first instance of arson encountered during the time of the story, his hog had broken loose and done some damage to another's property, and that man held the hog until he received a dollar in payment. Later that night, Abner burnt his barn down, not out of spite but because he felt he was persecuted in the manner of the hog. The same is truly later at Majr de Spain's, when he first burns the rug he feels he shouldn't have to clean, and then plans on burning down the whole plantation because of the judgment against him in the rug business. In this way, Abner Scnopes is a symbol of the frustrations of the poor itinerant farmer. Though there might not be…...
Faulkner's "Barn Burning"
Annotated Bibliography William Faulkner's "Barn Burning"
Ford discusses the narrative aging of the main character in "Barn Burning." Through the eyes of the brutalized child there is no real sense of his father's (Abner's) motivations and/or the son's characteristic numbness created by the self-preservation associated with the tragedy of abuse a cultural and personal phenomena. The work details by describing several passages in the work, and especially interactions between the father and son the aging of the young character in the historical context of post-civil war south, reflecting on what he might deduce about his father's character with maturity. The work provides a significant insight into a challenging aspect of the narrative, as the very brief recollection of the abused child, i.e. The few days of childhood that serve as the setting for the story, would not if told as a simple narrative have offered much insight into…...
mla
Loges, M.L. (1998). Faulkner's BARN BURNING. Explicator, 57(1), 43.
Zender discusses the pivotal moment in "Barn Burning" where the reader must ask the question of if Sarty effectively killed his father. The work then goes on to detail the manner in which the reader might first grapple with and then come to terms with the actions of the boy. Zender follows the psychological thought process by developing the line of reasoning that the reader first accepts the "killing" on face value, then as a symbolic act that is necessitated by maturation. The work offers clear insight into the understanding of the plot and character in the work, and leads the reader to recollect thought processes regarding this coming of age incident in the work which ends by allowing Sarty to make his lifelong choice, alluded to by the father (Abner) in an earlier scene where he tells Sarty that he is getting to be grown and therefore must learn to choose if he plans to stick with his family or choose to lose them as a result of choosing to side against them. The literary criticism is foundational to a greater understanding of the work itself and its position as a starting point for Sarty as a man in the historical and cultural context of the post-Civil War south, when so many individuals and families were learning to deal with the aftermath and the personal loss of the war.
Shakespeare's Othello, one of the major themes deals with the way individuals struggle to restore their honor and certainty about life. This is particularly reflected in the prime theme of betrayal -- Iago knows that Othello has an innate need to remain loyal and honorable to Venice, and that he can easily be consumed by jealousy if he believes Desdemona has betrayed him. The entire good/evil struggle revolves around Othello trying to appear and act in an honorable way; from Desdemona who has been honorable in keeping that honor, and in Iago's certainty that the only way he can bring Othello to his knees is by playing on his need for honor. "If I do prove her haggard, Through that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, I'd whistle her off and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune."
B2 -- Individuals often balance their lives somewhere in between…...
"Heh, one of them even had cow dung on his left shoe. Did you know my dad enterted one of them great plantations and rubbed dung all over one of their rugs?"
"No Sarty, you ain't tell me anything like that."
"That's cause the day he died I never looked back. I decided that my momma, my aunt, my brothers, my dad, they were all part of the past and I was headed towards the future."
"eren't you scared of being on your own? You were only ten."
"ell, the owner of the plantation, De Spain, felt bad for killin my dad for startin the fire, and decided to pay for me to go stay at one of his servant's quarters. It was there I spent the next couple years learnin to read and write and became obsessed wth trains."
"Ha, I remember. The first time I…...
mla
Works Cited
Byres, TJ. Sharecropping and Sharecroppers. London: F. Cass, 1983. Print.
Comprone, Joseph. "Literature and the Writing Process: A Pedagogical Reading of William Faulkner's "Barn Burning." Jstor.org. College Literature, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Faulkner, William. "Barn Burning." Lake-Sumter Community College | Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Priddy, Anna, and Harold Bloom. Bloom's How to Write About William Faulkner. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2010. Print.
This feeling of anger and resentment is effectively illustrated through the conflict between Abner and the Negro, De Spain's helper.
In this conflict, Abner is seen resisting the Negro's attempt to stop him from trespassing De Spain's home. Evidently, the Negro's status in life is much better than Abner, who has to toil very hard in order for him and his family to survive everyday. This fact infuriates Abner, and his resentment against the Negro's condition in life is reflected in his hateful statement about his poverty and De Spain's seemingly unfair status as a wealthy man: "Pretty and white, ain't it?...That's sweat. Nigger sweat. Maybe it ain't white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat in it" (175). This statement is Abner's own way of protesting against his condition in life, a bitterness that reflects not only class conflict between the wealthy and…...
mla
Bibliography
Fox, R. (1998). A companion to American thought. MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Horton, M. (2000). "Balzacian evolution and the origin of the Snopeses." Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 33, Issue 1.
Kartiganer, D. (1997). Faulkner in cultural context. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.
Krevling, M. (1998). Inventing Southern literature. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.
Digging Deeper: Flowering Judas and Barn Burning ProposalIn the stories \\\"Flowering Judas\\\" by Katherine Anne Porter and \\\"Barn Burning\\\" by William Faulkner, the characters are portrayed with a distinctive negative style that strongly influences the narratives and themes. These negative traits can be seen as personal flaws but they are also important in understanding the characters lives, natures, identities, and decision-making, along with the conflicts within each story. In a sense, their negative styles define them and also define the world around them. Digging deeper into them can explain much about them and their conflict.\\\"Flowering Judas\\\" - Laura and BraggioniIn \\\"Flowering Judas,\\\" Laura is portrayed with an intriguing blend of commitment and profound detachment. While she is involved in the revolutionary activities in Mexico, her interaction with others is characterized by a lack of genuine emotional engagement. An example of this is her interaction with the young revolutionary, Eugenio. Even…...
' But now he said nothing" (Faulkner). In contrast, the Younger family members also grow and change. Most notably, Walter Lee takes on the role of leader in the family, and makes the right decision for the rest of his family members. Critic Domina notes, "He must become the acknowledged head of his family, and he must also interact with other adult males as an equal" (Domina 113). These two characters gain personal growth and awareness, and the two stories' conclusions depend on this growth and awareness. The young boy will probably never see his dysfunctional family again, while the Youngers will probably face more discrimination and hatred. However, they have both attained their own measure of happiness, and both stories end on a somewhat hopeful note. Critic Ford continues, "Sarty will survive 'the terrible handicap of being young,' will surpass his beleaguered childhood and mature into a worthy human…...
mla
References
Cooper, David D. "Hansberry's a Raisin in the Sun." Explicator 52.1 (1993): 59-61.
Domina, Lynn. Understanding a Raisin in the Sun a Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.
maturation process, but it comes easily only to a few. Of course there are choices that usually generate little anguish such as what to have for breakfast or which route to take when going home, but when a person is a diabetic or inclement weather makes every road hazardous, even these choices become difficult. This paper discusses a poem and a short story by two of the greatest American authors of the twentieth century. Both Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" and illiam Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" are about the difficult choices people are often confronted with. The stories reflect both real and intangible choices that the protagonists had to make (in Frosts poem the main character is assumed to be the author himself) and what the outcome of the choices were. This paper will begin with a literal summary of the two works, the real choices…...
mla
Works Cited
Cornett, Michael E. "Robert Frost on 'Listen America': The Poet's Message to America in 1956." Papers on Language and Literature 29.4 (1994): 417-429. Print.
Faulkner, William. Barn Burning 1939. Web.
Loges, Max L. "Faulkner's Barn Burning." The Explicator 57.1 (1998): 43-46. Print.
Pauwels, Pamela, & Carol Hess. "The Road Less Traveled." Kappa Delta Pi Record 37.4 (2001): 164-170. ProQuest Direct.
Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library
of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
