William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”
William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning takes place in the rural country side in 1939. The story opens with a store being described with a cheese odor. The Justice of Peaces and Mr. Harris are discussing the events leading up to the burning of his barn. Mr. Abner Snopes’s hog keeps escaping and ending up in Mr. Harris’s farm. So Mr. Harris tells Mr. Snopes that his hog keeps escaping because the hog is not fenced in. Then Mr. Harris gives Mr. Snopes enough wire to fence in his hog and says next time the hog ends up in his farm he will keep it. The hog gets back into Mr. Harris’s farm again and so he goes to Mr. Snopes and notices that the wire had not been used to fence in the hog so Mr. Harris says that he will keep the hog until Mr. Snopes pays him a dollar pound fee. That evening Mr. Snopes sends a black man to give Mr. Harris is dollar pound and to warn him about his barn being burned. The black man said, “Wood and hay kin burn.” Mr. Harris’s barn burned that night. So Mr. Snopes and his family were kicked out of town and told to leave the country. Although were they did start over different events but the same conclusion of a barn burning were the result but they did actually get to burn the next person’s barn because it seems to the reader that the dad and the son have died.
One of the main points that “Barn Burning” represents is the negative effects from passing on family revenge and spitefulness and how revenge will destroy you. Throughout the book Faulkner places in italics “enemy! enemy!” This visual effect contributes to the message of toxic family influences that are passed down through generations. Faulkner through the story points out the negative influence of family and the story ultimately serves as a cautionary tale.
I found it interesting how Faulkner wrote the story with such flowery diction when the characters appeared so uneducated. He might have done this to represent class and also to separate himself from the piece so that no one would connect him with the characters in the story. If Faulkner did intentionally use very different diction for the characters as to the story its self it might have been to help describe the characters and to give more of an insight into Faulkner’s writing style and method.
Mr. Snopes had a reputation for burning barns and so felt obligated to live up to it. I felt like he would try to purposely offend someone so that he could burn his or her barn. Also this reputation would be passed down through his family to his oldest son who is also ironically his accomplish. The barn burnings seemed like the family’s traditions to do almost like it was their line of work.
End the end of the story the moral is that revenge will destroy you and to inflict it upon your family to keep it alive will destroy your family inevitably too.
Faulkner, William. Barn Burning. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Michael Meyer. Bedford/St.Martins. Boston, Mass. 2009.
