Discussion Topic
Literary elements in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning."
Summary:
Key literary elements in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" include symbolism, themes, and narrative style. The story uses fire as a symbol of power and destruction. Themes of loyalty, family conflict, and social class are central. Faulkner's complex narrative style, characterized by long sentences and stream of consciousness, adds depth to the characters and their internal struggles.
What are the three primary literary elements in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning?"
The most noticeable literary element Faulkner uses in "Barn Burning" is sentence structure. Faulkner's sentences are very long and have many interruptions. They flow like stream of consciousness because they are one claus after another. In "Barn Burning" the second sentence is 116 words in length.
Another major element Faulker uses is point of view. Faulkner relates this story from the young Sarty, who is ten years old. Faulkner's words depict a ten year old who is illiterate.
The other literary element is setting. The Snopes' are very illiterate people who are like slaves. Barn Burning's setting is not really a place but it is the act of traveling from one place to another. The Snopes' are always evicted from one place and then have to move to another, because of Ab's fighting and violence. Their wagon is the setting and also the story revolves around Abner's personality...
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and Sarty's attempt to get an handle on the situation in his rebellious manner.
What elements of literary Realism exist in Faulkner's "Barn Burning"?
While William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" exemplifies more his modernist style with interior monologue and prevailing motif of violence, the narrative is yet much more objective and straightforward that many of his other works. So, there is this element of Realism, as well as several others:
- A simple and direct narrative
Although his narrative contains the Modernistic interior dialogue of Sarty, there are many passages presented in an objective and less ornate prose than is typical of Faulkner. For instance, the passage in which the boy goes to the wagon after the opening trial, Faulkner writes,
It stood in a grove of locuts and mulberries across the raod. His two hulking sisters in the Sunday dresses and his mother and her sister in calico and sunbonnets were already in it, sitting on and among the sorry residue of the dozen and more movings which even the boy could remember....
- A detailed description of everyday life
Many of the descriptions are very realistic. For example, after the family has moved, Sarty looks up one day and his father tells him to harness the mule with the wagon gear:
...two hours later, sitting in the wagon bed behind his father and brother on the seat, the wagon accomplished a final curve, and he saw the weathered paintless store with its tattered tobacco-and patent-medicine posters....
- Regionalism
Faulkner's depiction of the post civil-war South includes the replication of the dialect of the Snopses as well as other characters. When, for instance, the judge tells Abner Snopse to leave the county, this is a typical judgment placed upon those guilty of maleficence. In the opening court scene, the judge shouts, "Damnation! Send him out of here!" Snopse replies that he is glad to leave,
"I aim to. I don't figure to stay in a country among people who...."
- Themes of psychological and socio-economic conflict
While Abner Snopse's acts of burning depict a violence typical of Modernist writing, his inner turmoil falls with the realm of Realism. Certainly, his conflict with those of the upper class such as the judges and the landloard are certainly socio-economic conflicts found in Realistic literature.
Of course, the main character's inner conflicts are the primary thematic focus. His sense of loneliness and anxiety about the conduct of his father greatly disturb Sarty. Continually, he struggles with revealing the truth about his father and the "hopeless despair" that Abner causes his mother. This psychological struggle involves the father's manipulation of family loyalty. But Sarty comes to realize that Abner's criminal acts absolve him of any disloyalty, so he reports his father out of a sense of what is ethical.