William Faulkner The Southern Literary Renaissance Barn Burning

William FaulknerThe Southern Literary RenaissanceBarn Burning Hao Guilian, Ph, D. Yunnan Normal University October, 2009

William Faulkner (1897-1962) • 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 1949Nobel Prize in Literature. Since then, he has often been cited as one of the most important writers in the history of American literature.

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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 individualsinvolved 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 • 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 • 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 • 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: • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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.

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. • 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 weed-choked 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 up, running on among the invisible trees, panting, sobbing, "Father! Father!” (from paragraph 107, about 215 words)

Questions to ponder • 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?

William Faulkner The Southern Literary Renaissance Barn Burning