Chandria Wilhelm

WRT 102

8:40

3/10/2008

The History Within

William Faulkner, is a well known and very influential American writer of the 20th century, and is considered to be one of the most important Southern writers of all time. Faulkner is known for writing fictional short stories, novels, and poems about history, culture, and family traditions. In his first collection of short stories, These 13 contained the short story “Barn Burning,” one of Faulkner’s more popular short stories. The story tells of an impoverished man named Abner Snopes, who continuously takes revenge on higher class men by burning down their barns, which creates a conflict of morality and loyalty between Abner and his son Sarty. Throughout the story Faulkner provides the reader with information about how people lived in the South during the 1930’s and the post Civil War era (Hönnighausen). In William Faulkner’s story “Barn Burning,” the role of class, race, and the change from the agrarian to the industrial age arising during the 19th century is put into perspective.

Understanding the setting of “Barn Burning” is crucial to interrupt the story. The story takes place in 1830’s post Civil War in the south during the reconstruction and Great Depression era. During this time the South is struggling to avoid being conquered by the North, and “…has retreated into plantation life and small-town existence, and it maintains in private the social hierarchy that characterized the region in its pre-war phase. Slavery has been abolished, but a vast distance still separates the land-owning Southern aristocracy from the tenant-farmers and bonded workers who do the trench-labor required by the plantation economy, itself in a state of disruption and decadence.” Like many other stories of Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” is believed to take place in one of the small towns in the Yoknapatawpha County of Mississippi. The Snopeses were part of the lower class society trying to survive by becoming sharecroppers, and often moved from one place to another (Answers.com 1).

In the first paragraph of the story “Barn Burning,” Faulkner immediately begins to explicate the class conflict caused by the social and economic turmoil of the great depression through symbols, and the struggles the Snopes family endures. There is an immediate distinction between Abner and the higher class populace by the use of the justice of the Peace court smelling like cheese. During the depression people who were able to purchase cheese were seen to be wealthy and came from higher class populace, and by using the cheese to refer to the Justice of Peace court who is trying to convict Abner is simply stating that they are authoritarian figures and posses power over him. The distinction between the lower and upper class is further expanded upon in the second sentence, “ … knew he smelled cheese, and more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind… (Faulkner 1).” These long series of clauses suggest that Sarty is illiterate, because he could not read the words on the labels of the cans he could only smell the food, which is clearly stated by saying that the letters “meant nothing to his mind (Faulkner 1).” During the depression illiteracy meant that you were impoverished and uneducated, which indicates that the Snopes family were part of the lower class populace (Sorbel).

There were two main distinct class roles that determined one’s hierarchy in the south during the great depression. The two careers that had been already chosen by society were either to become a plantation owner, or become a sharecropper. Abner Snopes’s career was a sharecropper, which kept him and many others in poverty, and Major de Spain was a plantation owner. Sharecropping was an agricultural work system that evolved after the civil war. It was a land contract between white plantation owners and impoverished white men and former black slaves. This system benefits both the plantation owner and sharecropper. Land owners with an ample amount of land no longer had the money to employ farmers; the solution to this problem was the sharecropping system. The land owners would allow tenants to use their farms to make a profit and in return the sharecroppers would repay the land owner with a portion of the profit earned. The land owners would supply the tenants with land, animals, equipment, and seed, and the tenant had to pay for rent, food, and additional supplies needed (Riddle). The plantation owner known as major de Spain in the story “Barn Burning” was of the hierarchy class and had control over the sharecropper, Abner Snopes. By portraying Abner as a sharecropper Faulkner is indicating that he was impoverished, uneducated, and had no power. Whereas Major de Spain is portrayed to be a man of wealth and power (Mitchell). Also throughout the story Major de Spain is repeatedly referred to as “the white man,” while Abner is never referred to by his race. Major de Spain is associated with “whiteness,” and Abner is associated with “blackness” which indicates that he is a man of lower class (Lessig).

Along with the class conflict, race is highlighted in the story. The time this story was set in was right after slavery had been abolished. Even after the emancipation of the slaves many forms of racism still occurred, people still treated African Americans as if they were slaves. “Most African Americans in the United States lived in rural areas of the South, where racism and segregation left them with limited employment opportunities beyond farming (Debt Peonage).” This story demonstrates different forms of racism through the encounter Abner has with Major de Spain’s black servant. When Abner arrives at the door to Major de Spain’s manshion a black man “in a linen jacket (Faulkner)” opens the door, “Here the finer quality of the black's attire, his position within the house, and his power to deny the white entrance heighten the racial tensions… His supposed supremacy as a white man is challenged by the black servant who obviously holds a superior position in the doorway (Byrne).” Abner was infuriated at the fact that the servant lived better than him, and that he is outside doing “slave work” while the black servant who he still sees as a slave is inside cleaning the house. As Abner and his son Sarty begin to walk away from the mansion Abner says, "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 (Faulkner)." Here Abner sees Major de Spain’s house as a product of “nigger sweat” slave labor, and now unwillingly his “white sweat” has to be mixed together. Abner is still trying to create a distinction between him and the black servant so he can feel superior which is why he adds, “Maybe it ain't white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat with it (Faulkner)” (Lessig).

During the time this story was set in the south was going through a major transformation, the old agrarian age was ending and the industrial age was arising. Throughout the story Abner repeatedly burns down barns, which symbolizes the destruction of the aristocracy, plantations, sharecropping, race and class differences. With the destruction of the old way of life the burned down barns have left room for society to make a transformation into the industrial age and change the way life once use to be. Faulkner also makes it well known that the old way of society was going to be put to an end by the use of the sentence, “Now he could hear his father’s stiff foot as it came down on the boards with the clocklike finality, a sound out of all proportion to the displacement of the body it bore and which was not dwarfed either by the white door before it … (Faulkner).” Abner’s actions and emotions in this story were carefully thought out before Faulkner had written this story to convey the message that the agrarian age was being put to an end. Within the story the end of the agrarian age is continuously portrayed, but there are only a few places that suggest what was to come next. Through Faulkner’s description of Abner’s “iron like black coat,” and his “shaggy iron-gray brows” represent the rise of the industrial age.

William Faulkner’s O. Henry award winning short story “Barn burning” is about more than a conflict between a father and a son or an impoverished man who retaliates against the higher populace. It is about the history during the Great Depression that lies beneath the father and son conflict and revenge. Numerous times throughout the story the role of class, race, and the change from the agrarian to the industrial age is put into perspective. This story offers insight about what life was like during the 1900’s.

Works Cited

Answers.com. 12 March 2009 .

Byrne, Mary Ellen. “"Barn Burning": A Story from the '30s.” Teaching Faulkner. 16 March 2009 .

"Debt Peonage." Encyclopedia of African American Society. Ed. Gerald D. Jaynes. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference, 2005. 251-252. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. PIMA COMMUNITY COLLEGE. 13 Mar. 2009 .

Hönnighausen, Lothar. "What Remains of Faulkner." The Achievement of William Faulkner: A Centennial Tribute. Ed. Thomas M. Inge Ashland, Va.: Randolph-Macon College, 1998. 21-25. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 170. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 21-25. Literature Resource Center. Gale. PIMA COMMUNITY COLLEGE. 11 Mar. 2009 .

Lessig, Matthew. "Class, Character, and Croppers: Faulkner's Snopeses and the Plight of the Sharecropper." Arizona Quarterly. 55.4 (Winter 1999): 79-113. Rpt. in Twentieth- Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 141. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 79-113. Literature Resource Center. Gale. PIMA COMMUNITY COLLEGE. 11 Mar. 2009 .

Mitchell, Lee. "William Faulkner (1897-1962)." 2001. Litiature Online. 12 March 2009 .

Riddle, Wesley Allen. "The origins of black sharecropping." Mississippi Quarterly 49.1 (Winter95/96 1995): 53. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. PIMA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Tucson, AZ. 10 Mar. 2009 .

Sorbel, Rebecca. "“Barn Burning”: Embers of Inequity." University of Idaho. 15 March 2009 .