Transcript barn burning pp

William Faulkner's
"Barn Burning"
Tone, Style and Voice
 Faulkner’s control over style and tone is highly individual,
because all authors put words uniquely together to fit specific
circumstances of specific works.
 Faulkner’s style adapts words to situations.
 “Barn Burning” is a story of the Snopeses, a poor white family
who appear in a number of Faulkner’s narratives of fictional
Yoknapatawpha County
 Setting: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, about 30 years
after the Civil War (1861-65), thus, in the 1890s
“Barn Burning” Family Conflict
 The father, Abner, avenges himself on more socially
established whites by burning their barns and carrying out
lesser acts of mischief.
 The younger son, named Colonel Sartoris (Sarty) Snopes, 10
years old, struggles to revolt against his father
 Colonel Sartoris: a Confederate Army officer and leading
citizen of Jefferson, Mississippi (higher class and [perhaps]
higher morality)
Family Conflict (continued)
 Sarty struggles between family allegiance and
external standards of justice
 Abner hits him and tells him “to learn to stick to
your own blood or you ain’t going to have any
blood to stick to you”.
 Later, twenty years later, he was to tell himself,
"If I had said they wanted only truth, justice, he
would have hit me again”.
Family Conflict (continued)
 Opening Scene: makeshift courtroom in general
store
 Sarty feels “the old fierce pull of blood” his
father’s enemy is his enemy too
 However, he also feels “grief and despair” because
he must tell a lie for his father
 But when another boy calls Abner a “Barn
Burner,” Sarty attacks the boy
Symbols: Fire
 As a barn burner, Abner is associated with fire
 “The element of fire spoke to some deep
mainspring of his father’s being”
 Fire as force of civilization and destruction
 Taking the family’s lantern oil to burn de Spain’s
barn
Symbol: Rug
 The destruction of the rug is symbolic of Abner’s
larger rebellion against society.
 He dirties the rug with his stiff foot injured
during the war: his rebellion has long history.
 He “never looked at it, he never once looked
down at the rug”—willfully disregarding his
destructiveness.
Symbol: Cheese
 Cheese is a peculiar symbol, associated with the
power of family allegiance over external justice in
the 2 court scenes
 See opening of story: “The store in which the
Justice of the Peace’s court was sitting smelled of
cheese” .
 Abner buys cheese from “courtroom” store and
shares it with his sons
The Ending
 Sarty reveals his father’s plan/actions to the de
Spain’s
 Sarty assumes that his father is dead. Can we be
sure?
 Sarty concludes that his father “was brave,” but
the narrator protests.
 Sarty heads out into the dark woods…
Lit Circles
 1.) What are the sources of tension / conflict in this story?
 2.) How would you account for the actions of the father --
having burned the first barn, the rug incident, and going to
burn the second barn? What is motivating the father to do
these things?
 3.) How would you account for the actions of the boy,
especially as he seems ready to tell the truth about his father?
 4.) Examine the boy’s “interior monologues,” the italicized
parts of the story.What do these tell us about the boy, about
others, about Faulkner’s style(s) of narration?
Lit Circles (continued)
 5.) Examine the references to the boy's sisters in the story. How
and why does Faulkner describe the sisters the way he does?
 6.) Examine the places in the story where the boy's mother and
aunt appear. How and why does Faulkner describe these women
the way he does?
 7.)What are we “to take” from this story?What is the central
theme or message? Are there other themes or messages as well?
 8.) How would you describe Faulkner’s “style”? How does his
compare to the styles of Porter, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway (all
four were/are known for their unique styles)? Which style(s) do
you prefer, and why?