Faulkner's "Barn Burning"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines William Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" and looks at how at one level it is a very detailed description of that period of Southern history during which everyone was legally free but which so many were bound to contracts of labor. It also discusses how at the same time it also a story about the enduring dynamics of human relationships, of the different ways in which people can be strong or weak and the ways in which one can mimic the others. It demonstrates how we are made to understand when we read this story both something of what life is like for a young boy in a sharecropping family in the South and also what it is like to be a boy coming into a sense of his own power in any family, in any society, in the world.

From the Paper:

"The father in this story who burns barns and ruins everything else that he touches " from rugs to people " is a character who cannot learn from the past, although it might be argued that he too in on a quest one of self-immolation as well as the arson-destruction of everything around him. His father has lost the ability to set out on any quests, to direct his action outward to the world. He seems to be a man who can take action, for certainly he does make things happen. But for all the fires he sets he is actually a passive person. He is a person who does not change the world but is entrapped by it. He is a man who cannot conceive of making his own way in the world: He is enslaved in the most fundamental of ways."

More papers on Faulkner's "Barn Burning":

• Analytical Essay # 84007 : "Barn Burning" "
• Book Review # 96767 : "Araby" and "Barn Burning"-- A Comparison"
• Book Review # 123862 : "'Barn Burning' and Symbolism"
• Book Review # 111295 : "Barn Burning" and Missed Opportunities"

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