Tenant farmers in the post-Civil War South were at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole, and landowners were not always the most honest employers. William Faulkner outlines the frustration and struggle of one such family in his short story: “Barn Burning.” Patriarch Abner Snopes is an angry man who drags his family from one tenant farm to the next; barely scraping by. Disenchanted with the Southern system, Abner is convinced that all wealthy land owners are corrupt and unpunished. Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” addresses injustice and inequality between the social classes during the 1930’s.
Abner Snopes was frustrated and tired of his dead end life. He had moved his family at least 12 times in less years, and they were no better
off than when they had started: “fourteen minutes past two o’clock of a dead and forgotten day and time.” (802). He never seemed to catch a break, but then again, he could not shake his anger toward the subjecting wealthy class: “I reckon I’ll have a word with the man that aims to begin to-morrow owning me body and soul for the next eight months.” He refused to accept the rich and their flaunted wealth: “His father stopped at the top of the steps and scraped his boot clean on the edge of it.” (805) He did not believe that de Spain had solely forged his own wealth, but had walked upon others to achieve it: “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 with it.” (805) Abner conveys his contempt for de Spain’s station in life and tracks horse manure all over his foyer rug. Abner then refuses to clean it properly, instead using a stone to ruin the rug: “It costs a hundred dollars. But you never had a hundred dollars. You never will.” The landowner then charges Abner an outrageous fine of twenty bushels of corn above and beyond his share at harvest. Faulkner shows the imbalance of power and influence that the wealthy had over the tenant farmer. Because of the debt system many farmers stayed in debt to a landowner for years, never making enough money to buy their own land. The injustice of losing twenty bushels of corn to a materialistic rug was too much for Abner to bear. He attempts to get the Justice of the Peace to weigh in on the matter, but he is unhappy with the verdict. Abner feels that the only way to set things right is to burn down de Spain’s barn: “a long, swirling roar incredible and soundless, blotting the stars.” Abner retaliates by destroying property, the only way he felt would even the playing field on a system that had forever held him in financial bondage
Students are always taught about slavery, segregation, war, and immigration, but one of the least common topics is farm women in the 1930’s. Lou Ann Jones, author of Mama Learned Us to Work, portrayed a very clear and clean image to her readers as to what the forgotten farm-women during the 1930’s looked like. This book was very personal to me, as I have long listened to stories from my grandmother who vividly remembers times like these mentioned by Jones. In her book Mama Learned Us to Work, author Lou Ann Jones proves that farm women were a major part of Southern economy throughout the content by the ideology and existence of peddlers, the chicken business, and linen production.
The Significance of Family Meals in Faulkner’s Barn Burning, Shall Not Perish, and Two Soldiers
In “Barn Burning,” Abner is described as stiff, wolf-like, and without heat because of his coldness and bitterness toward society in which he was part of during the time of the War Between the States. The main character is Abner Snopes who sharecrops to make a living for his family; in his story, Faulkner describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during that particular time.
At first glance, the story “Barn burning” seems just to be about a tyrannical father and a son who is in the grips of that tyranny. I think Faulkner explores at least one important philosophical question in this story were he asks at what point should a person make a choice between what his parent(s) and / or family believes and his own values?
the South, the time period following the Civil War, the only thing that kept the
William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War. The main character, Abner Snopes, shares the ropes to make a living for his family. He despises wealthy people. Out of resentment for wealthy people, he burns their barns to get revenge.
In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, housing inequality is readily apparent and is vividly described in the description of the “Negro settlement.” Even the fact that the white townspeople call it a settlement makes it clear they do not want it to be part of the town of Maycomb. The inequality goes beyond just the housing, affecting many aspects of how the African Americans are forced to live.
It has been stated that while doing what is right is not always easy, it is in fact doing what is right despite it being difficult that is quite the accomplishment. Justice one finds to be one of the major themes throughout “Barn Burning”. The notion of intuitive justice presents itself as a characteristic explored throughout William Faulkner’s literary masterpiece “Barn Burning” through the protagonist Colonel Sartoris Snopes, also referred to as Sarty throughout “Barn Burning”. Faulkner presents Sarty and demonstrates his sense of justice through literal actions and dramatic context.
Barn Burning Throughout the story “Barn Burning”, author William Faulkner conveys the moral growth and development of a young boy, as he must make a critical decision between either choosing his family and their teachings or his own morals and values. The reader should realize that the story “Barn Burning” was written in the 1930’s, a time of economic, social, and cultural turmoil. Faulkner carries these themes of despair into the story of the Snopes family. Faulkner opens the story, “Barn Burning” in a southern courthouse room of the during the Civil War reconstruction era, also a time of social, cultural, and economic instability.
In a young boy’s life, making the morally right choice can be difficult especially when the choice goes against someone that is suppose to be respected, such as a parent. “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner is a coming of age story about a son of a poor and evil sharecropper. Showing the difference between good and evil, Faulkner uses character descriptions and plot, revealing Sarty’s struggles’s as he chooses between making the morally right decision or to be loyal to a dishonest father.
Sarty's Point of View in Barn Burning by William Faulkner. William Faulkner elected to write “Barn Burning” from his young character Sarty’s perspective because his sense of morality and decency would present a more plausible conflict in this story. Abner Snopes inability to feel the level of remorse needed to generate a truly moral predicament in this story, sheds light on Sarty’s efforts to overcome the constant “pull of blood”(277) that forces him to remain loyal to his father. As a result, this reveals the hidden contempt and fear Sarty has developed over the years because of Abner’s behavior.
After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a “response to the destitution and disorganized” agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had “no entitlement to the land that he cultivated,” and was forced “to work under any conditions” that his landowner enforced (Wilson 798). Many landowners viewed sharecropping as a way to elude the now barred possession of slaves while still maintaining field hands for labor in an inexpensive and ample manner. The landowners watched over the sharecroppers and their every move diligently, with harsh supervision, and pressed the sharecroppers to their limits, both mentally and physically. Not only were the sharecroppers just given an average of one-fourth of their harvest, they had “one of the most inadequate incomes in the United States, rarely surpassing more than a few hundred dollars” annually (Wilson 30). Under such trying conditions, it is not hard to see why the sharecroppers struggled to maintain a healthy and happy life, if that could even be achieved. Due to substandard conditions concerning sharecropper’s clothing, insufficient food supplies, and hazardous health issues, sharecroppers competed on the daily basis to stay alive on what little their landowners had to offer them.
In the beginning of the story, Sartoris (Sarty) is faced with his first major conflict.
Many authors and poets uses symbolism to express emotion and sections throughout the text. Symbols is a great literary device that can help give messages to the reader without the author being too direct. In the story, “Barns Burning” by William Faulkner, Symbolism helps analysis different emotions and meaning throughout the story.
In the early 1900s, the American South had very distinctive social classes: African Americans, poor white farmers, townspeople, and wealthy aristocrats. This class system is reflected in William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, where the Bundrens a poor, white family, are on a quest to bury their now deceased wife and mother, Addie in the town of Jefferson. Taking a Marxist criticism approach to As I Lay Dying, readers notice how Faulkner’s use of characterization reveals how country folk are looked down upon by the wealthy, upper class townspeople.