Barn Burning (1938)William Faulkner

William Faulkner (1897-1962)Greatest American Southern writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950A master of modernist experimentation in the novel, related to his obsession with timestream of consciousness, temporal shifts, and multiple voicesSome major novels: The Sound and the Fury (1929) [4 narrators], As I Lay Dying (1930) [15 narrators], Absalom! Absalom! (1936)

Colonel William Clark Falkner (1826-89)Faulkners great-grandfatherCivil War VeteranPoliticianPopular Romantic Novelist (The White Rose of Memphis, 1881)Died of gunshot wound from former business partner

William Faulkner (1897-1962)Born William Falkner, 25 Sept. 1897, New Albany, Mississippi1918: joins Canadian Royal Air Force1919-20 U of Mississippi1921: U of Mississippi Post Office

Faulkner: Early Publications1924: The Marble Faun (poems)1925: travels in Europe1927: Mosquitoes1928: Sartoris

Faulkner: Major Phase1929: The Sound and the Fury1930 As I Lay Dying1931: Sanctuary1932: Light in August1935: Pylon1936: Absalom, Absalom!

Faulkner in Hollywood: 1930s

Faulkner: Later Fiction1938: The Unvanquished; Barn Burning1940: The Hamlet1942: Go Down, Moses1948: Intruder in the Dust

Faulkners Critical ReputationBetter regarded in Europe than in U.S.Then: 1946: The Portable Faulkner1950: Nobel Prize for Literature

Faulkner, after the Nobel1954: A Fable (Pulitzer Prize)1957: The Town1959: The Mansion1962: The Reivers

William Faulkner (1897-1962)His great theme is the influence of the past on the presentGavin Stevens in Requiem for a Nun (1951), says: The past is never dead. Its not even past. [T]o me, Faulkner remarked, no man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such thing really as was because the past is. It is a part of every man, every woman, and every moment. All of his and her ancestry, background, is all a part of himself and herself at any moment.

Yoknapatawpha CountyFaulkners apocryphal county, patterned on his native Lafayette County. The county seat, Jefferson, resembles Faulkners hometown of Oxford in many particularsbut without Oxfords University of Mississippi campus Faulkner said Yoknapatawpha means Water flows slow through the flatland.

Yoknapatawpha County2,400 square miles;the population, 6,298 whites and 9,313 Negroes, for a total of 15,611

from Nobel Acceptance SpeechI believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poets, the writers, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.

QuestionIs Faulkners vision in his fiction as positive and uplifting as the vision expressed in this Nobel lecture? Or is his fiction more ambivalent?

Barn Burninga story of the Snopeses, a poor white family who appear in a number of Faulkners narratives of fictional Yoknapatawpha CountySetting: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, about 30 years after the Civil War (1861-65), thus, in the 1890s

Barn Burning: the film, 1980Part of The American Short Story CollectionStarring Tommy Lee Jones as Abner SnopesFeaturing Faulkners nephew Jimmy Faulkner as Major de Spain

Barn Burning: Family ConflictThe father, Abner, avenges himself on more socially established whites by burning their barns and carrying out lesser acts of mischiefThe younger son, named Colonel Sartoris (Sarty) Snopes, 10 years old, struggles to revolt against his fatherColonel Sartoris: a Confederate Army officer and leading citizen of Jefferson, Mississippi (higher class and [perhaps] higher morality)

Barn Burning: Family ConflictSarty struggles between family allegiance and external standards of justiceAbner hits him and tells him to learn to stick to your own blood or you aint going to have any blood to stick to you (1793, last para.). Later, twenty years later, he was to tell himself, "If I had said they wanted only truth, justice, he would have hit me again (1793, last para.)

Barn Burning: Family ConflictOpening Scene (1790-92): makeshift courtroom in general storeSarty feels the old fierce pull of blood (1791, 1st para.); his fathers enemy is his enemy tooHowever, he also feels grief and despair because he must tell a lie for his fatherBut when another boy calls Abner a Barn Burner, Sarty attacks the boy (1792, middle)

Abner: MotivationDoes Abner have an understandable motivation?Abners predicament: he falls into the cracks of Southern society: he is not a member of the white aristocracy nor the the black servant classSee visit to de Spain mansion (1796, middle): Thats sweat, he tells Sarty. Nigger sweat (1796, top)Question: Does the history of slavery in the South undercut or taint its ideals of truth and justice?

Abner: MotivationDuring Civil War, Abner did not fight for either side. Instead he stole horses from both sides. See 1802 (3rd para.): his father had gone to that war a private in the fine old European sense, wearing no uniform, admitting the authority of and giving fidelity to no man or army or flag, going to war . . .for booty--it meant nothing and less than nothing to him if it were enemy booty or his own.

Abner: MotivationIn any case, Abner is persuasive. See 1793 (1st main para.): There was something about his wolflike independence and even courage, when the advantage was at least neutral, which impressed strangers, as if they got from his latent ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest lay with his.

Symbols: FireAs a barn burner, Abner is associated with fireSee 1793 (2nd main para.): the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his fathers being Fire as force of civilization and destructionSee 1800 (2nd full para.): taking the familys lantern oil to burn de Spains barn

Symbols: RugThe destruction of the rug is symbolic of Abners larger rebellion against societySee 1795: He dirties the rug with his stiff foot injured during the war (1792): his rebellion has long historyHe never looked at it, he never once looked down at the rugwillfully disregarding his destructiveness (1795).

Symbols: RugSee bottom 1796-top 1797: After he cleans the rug, his foot tracks are replaced by long, water-cloudy scoriations resembling the sporadic course of lilliputian mowing machine (1797)suggesting his rebellion is small and not very effective

Symbols: CheeseCheese is a peculiar symbol, associated with the power of family allegiance over external justice in the 2 court scenesSee opening of story: The store in which the Justice of the Peaces court was sitting smelled of cheese (1790). See 1800, top: Abner buys cheese from courtroom store and shares it with his sons

ModernismFaulkner portrays this story of conflict through a modernist aesthetic, through experimentation withConsciousnessTimeSpace

Modernism: ConsciousnessUsing italics, Faulkner portrays the limited and often conflicted internal thoughts of the boy SartySee, for example, 1791-92

Modernism: TimeThe narrator jumps backward and forward in time, and suspends time:Abners wartime activities are repeatedly mentionedprolonged instant of mesmerized gravity (bottom 1791-92)The family carries an old clock stopped at 2:14 of a dead and forgotten day and time (1792)Abners handling of the mules anticipates descendants handling of motor car (1792, last para.)Narrators speculates how Sarty might have thought if he were older (1793, 2nd main para.)

Modernism: SpaceFaulkner portrays reality through geometric, two-dimensional shapesthe father is repeatedly described as a flat shape, without . . . depth, depthless, as if cut from tin (1793, 1795).the fathers crude, flat shape contrasts with the serene columned backdrop of the de Spain mansion, with its associations of peace, joy, and dignity (1794-95).

Faulkners Rowan Oak, Oxford, Miss.

Picasso, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910

The EndingSarty assumes that his father is dead. Can we be sure?Sarty concludes that his father was brave, but the narrator protests (1802)Sarty ultimately prepares to enter the dark woods (1803), in some ways a typically American ending, reminiscent of Irvings Rip Van Winkle and Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn.

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