William Faulkner
The Southern Literary Renaissance
Barn Burning
Hao Guilian, Ph, D.
Yunnan Normal University
October, 2009
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
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A Nobel Prize-winning American author.
One of the most influential writers of the
20th century, his works are set in his
native state of Mississippi. He is
considered one of the most important
Southern writers along with Mark Twain,
Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor,
Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, and
Tennessee Williams.
While his work was published regularly
starting in the mid 1920s, Faulkner was
relatively unknown before receiving the
1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Since
then, he has often been cited as one of
the most important writers in the history
of American literature.
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The elder Falkner was greatly
influenced by the history of his
family and the region in which
they lived. Mississippi marked
his sense of humor, his sense of
the tragic position of blacks and
whites, his characterization of
Southern characters and
timeless themes, including
fiercely intelligent people
dwelling behind the façades of
good old boys and simpletons.
Major works
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His major novels include The
Sound and the Fury (1929), As
I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctury
(1931), Light in August (1932),
Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and
The Hamlet (1940).
His books of short stories
include These Thirteen (1931),
Go Down, Moses (1942), and
The Collected Stories of William
Faulkner (1950).
The American South
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The end of the Civil War and
its aftermath:
sharpening and perpetuating
cultural differences
the economic discriminations
locked the region for years
a colonial economy
remained basically rural,
agricultural, and poor
industrialization was
transforming it but too slowly
The Southern Agrarians
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Appeared in the 1920, took a clearly
expressed anti-industrial stance
Became known also as the “Fugitives”
Expressed a conservative outlook as a whole
Rejected “northern” urban, commercial values,
which had taken over America
Called for a return to the land and to
American traditions that could be found in the
South
The Southern Renaissance as a Literary
Movement
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The Southern Renaissance refers roughly to
the period between the two world wars
The writers were far enough in time from the
Civil War and slavery to regard their region
with some degree of objectivity
Used the techniques of international
modernism, such as stream of consciousness,
complex points of view, and jarring
juxtapositions
Cultural Context
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By the 1920s the time was really ripe for the
emergence and flowering of a Balzacian
series of novels
Nearly all the writers of this period tend to
see the story of individuals involved with the
history of a family and that involved with the
history of a culture and of a region
For them the society with which they are
concerned is a traditional society and the past
is still alive
Cultural Context
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Why then did a great surge of creative energy
manifest itself in the South just at that time?
A possible answer is that when an older
culture is beginning to disappear, when the
bonds which tie its members together are
becoming loose and people become
conscious of the past as truly past, it is just
then that a literary flowering may occur
Cultural Context
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For half a century the southern states had
been economically stagnant
Reconstruction had not really ‘reconstructed’
the social pattern or the basic values
And now the time had come for questioning
the old truths and the past of their region.
The result was an unusual situation of
“double focus, a looking two ways” (Allan Tate)
which proved to be creatively fruitful
Members of the Southern Renaissance
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William Faulkner
Allen Tate
Robert Penn Warren
Eudora Welty
Caroline Gordon
Katherine Anne Porter
Thomas Wolfe
Themes of the Southern Renaissance
1. The burden of the past:
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It is the complex legacy of shame and guilt,
which makes history become an individual’s
fate;
This burden can be great but the emphasis
on the societal over the individual leads to
the heroic Southern stoicism;
Individuals face decline and defeat with a
public face of bravery, fortitude, and nobility.
2. Identity
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The individual’s relationship to his or her community
is closely linked to the burden of the past;
In Northeastern American literature, identity is
proudly and defiantly individual in the Puritan and
Transcendental traditions;
The Southerner’s identity/honor is based on his or
her standing in the community and family determined
by the burden of the past.
Faulkner’s Writing style in general
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Faulkner is known for an experimental style with
meticulous attention to diction and rhythm. In
contrast to the minimalist understatement of his
contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner made
frequent use of "stream of consciousness" in his
writing, and wrote often highly emotional, subtle,
intellectual, complex, and sometimes Gothic or
grotesque stories of a wide variety of characters—
ranging from former slaves or descendents of slaves,
to poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners,
to Southern aristocrats.
Nobel Acceptance Speech
Our tragedy today is a general and universal
physical fear so long sustained by now that we
can even bear it. There are no longer problems
of the spirit. There is only the question: When
will I be blown up? Because of this, the young
man or woman writing today has forgotten the
problems of the human heart in conflict with
itself which alone can make good writing
because only that is worth writing about, worth
the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the
basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself
that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for
anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the
old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral
and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and
compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors
under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of
defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of
victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or
compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones,
leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the
glands.
Barn Burning
Barn Burning
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The story opens with Abner Snopes, the father of young
Sartoris "Sarty" Snopes, being driven out of town after
burning down a neighboring farmer's barn. The Snopes
family is ordered to move to begin life anew, but Abner
cannot seem to control his pyromania and hatred for society.
After his expulsion, Abner finds work as a tenant farmer in
the employ of Major de Spain and his wife Lula. Shortly after
arriving at his new house, Abner visits Major de Spain's
house and tracks horse droppings on a blond rug. Major de
Spain orders Abner to clean the rug, which he in turn directs
his daughters to do, and they clean it so incompetently that
it is damaged beyond repair. Major de Spain levies on Abner
a fine of 20 bushels of corn against the price of the rug. At
court, a Justice of the Peace reduces the fine to ten bushels
of corn.
Barn Burning
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Feeling once again wronged, Abner makes preparations to
light fire to Major de Spain's barn. Sarty warns Major de
Spain of his father's intentions to burn down his barn and
then flees in the direction of his father. He is soon
overtaken by Major de Spain on his horse and jumps into
the ditch to get out of the way. The young Sartoris then
hears the sound of three gun shots, perhaps indicating his
father's murder and potentially that of his older brother,
who was his father's accomplice. (However, as Faulkner
often does, he makes references to the characters in a
later work, revealing that neither the father nor the
brother were killed.) This deeply disturbs the boy.
Profoundly affected by his father's legacy, the boy does
not return to his family but continues on with his life alone.
Themes
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It would be easy to say that Sartoris, in the end, must
make a choice between right and wrong, between the
"peace and dignity" represented by the de Spains with the
nastiness and misery of the Snopes family, but it is more
than that. At the story’s beginning, when Sarty was ready
to testify that his father did not burn down that barn, he
would have done it because a son’s job is to stick to his
father. At the story’s end, he warns Major de Spain that
his father is about to burn down his beautiful plantation,
even though he knows that this will bring his family down
once and for all, and he will never be able to go home
again. This is heavy knowledge for a boy -- but Sarty is
able to do it because he now sees that he is not his father,
and the route he wants to travel in the world is nothing
like his father’s path.
Setting: the American South around 1895;
one week in late February or early March
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The first part of "Barn Burning" takes place in an
unknown county somewhere in the southern United
States. The second part of the story is set in rural
Yoknapatawpha County in the state of Mississippi.
Yoknapatawpha is Faulkner's fictional creation and
serves as the setting for a great number of his stories.
As we learn when Sarty's sitting on the hill at midnight,
only four days have passed since his family arrived at
the de Spain farm, plus one day of travel time. We have
about a five-day story that goes back thirty years in the
past and twenty years in the future.
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Now to get deeper into the setting into the setting. "Barn Burning" seems
concerned with contrasts, like the difference between Sarty's daytime life
and his nighttime life. At night, unlawful activities are performed. Barn
burning is our case in point. Sarty is always woken in the dark by Abner,
either to act as his accomplice on some dark errand, or to get smacked
around and lectured. After Sarty leaves it all behind, the dark becomes, at
least for the moment, a place to sleep until he wakes naturally, and a place
where birds sing in the arrival of morning.
The daytime scenes in "Barn Burning" seem to revolve around work and
court. So long as Sarty is working, he's fine. It's when he's being forced to
lie and otherwise act outside the law that he freaks out. Part of what
makes Sarty run is the realization that no matter how hard he works, so
long as he stays with his father, neither his days nor his nights are his own.
Both are controlled by his father. Before he runs, night and day threaten to
blend into a seamless nightmare that he must escape or lose himself
completely.
Sarty’s inner conflicts in the last part
of the story
Sarty wants to stop his father from doing wrong
things.
Sarty doesn’t expect the death of his father and
brother.
Sarty’s despair, regret and confusion expressed
through his calling “Pap! Pap!” and “Father. My
father.
Sarty’s understanding of his father’s barn
burning to the remark of “He was brave!”
Sarty’s psychological journey throughout the
story.
Language study
description of motion.
description of inner world.
complex sentences.
Faulkner uses many very long sentences
in his story, particularly in paragraphs 1,
15, 16, 27, 41, 42, 47, 82, 85, 91, 101,
and 107.
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What effect did they have on you and
your understanding of Sarty’s dilemma?
He could not hear either: the galloping mare was almost
upon him before he heard her, and even then he held his
course, as if the very urgency of his wild grief and need
must in a moment more find him wings, waiting until the
ultimate instant to hurl himself aside and into the weedchoked roadside ditch as the horse hundered past and on,
for an instant in furious silhouette against the stars, the
tranquil early summer night sky which, even before the
shape of the horse and rider vanished, stained abruptly and
violently upward: a long, swirling roar incredible and
soundless, blotting the stars, and he springing up and into
the road again, running again, knowing it was too late yet
still running even after he heard the shot and, an instant
later, two shots, pausing now without knowing he had
ceased to run, crying "Pap! Pap!," running again before he
knew he had begun to run, stumbling, tripping over
something and scrabbling up again without ceasing to run,
looking backward over his shoulder at the glare as he got
Questions to ponder
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Although, most critics would admit, “Barn Burning” is
primarily about the young Sarty Snopes and his
progressive recognition of the intensity of his conflict,
there are some who see Abner Snopes not as a demonic
villain but as someone to be pitied because of his being
chained to such extreme poverty; they see his contracted
servitude as the force driving his justified rebellion
against the Aristocracy, represented by the De Spains.
What are your thoughts on this character?