William Faulkners Barn Burning - Essay Example

Barn Burning William Faulkner’s Barn Burning is a short story that details the life of a child who moves from town to town because his father constantly burn the barns of the people with whom they are staying. The story functions as an investigation into social class and moral responsibility. Throughout Barn Burning, Faulker makes use of a series of literary devices to achieve a chilling emotional effect. This essay incorporates literary scholarship in analyzing the ways that Faulker uses narrative complexity, leitmotifs, and the character’s moral maturity, in develop a work of exemplary literary merit.

Throughout Barn Burning, William Faulker makes excellent use of a number of narrative voices as a literary voice to achieve a higher level of psychological complexity. Sartoris Snopes perspective is at times restricted to the immediate occurrence of what is going on in the story and at other times the omniscient narrator makes reference to insight Sartoris gains many years into the future. In Obscuritys myriad components: the theory and practice of William Faulkner, author R. Rio-Jelliffe discusses the ways that Faulkner implements this literary device: The best point of view and voice in the great works tend to be plural.

Embedded in one distinct points of view, and voices fuse time.in the story Barn Burning…the fusion delineates the boy’s moral dilemma, to remain loyal to his erring father, or to assert his growing sense of right and wrong (p. 38). Faulkner uses this literary strategy to great effect by showing how later in life the boy reflects on the size of the fire’s his father constructs offers insight to his motivation for starting them. Faulker writes: a small fire…such fires were his fathers habit…Older, the boy might have remarked this and wondered why not a big one; why should not a man who had not only seen the waste and extravagance of war, but who had in his blood an inherent voracious prodigality with material not his own, have burned everything in sight?

Obviously, the implication being that the reason his father is starting these fires is related to his experience in war. Another interesting literary element that Faulkner incorporates into Barn Burning is through the cyclical recurrence of a leitmotif. That is, an element of the story that is repeated in an attempt to display a symbolic truth. Ferguson identifies one of the crucial leitmotifs as Faulkner’s incorporation of the term “stiff” when describing the father. According to Ferguson, by consistently using this term to refer to the father’s physical position, Faulkner is symbolically extending the description as an indictment of the father’s character.

Faulkner writes, “His father, stiff in his black Sunday” and “He was a little stiff”. Ultimately, this demonstrates that the father is actually stiff and rigid in his understanding of reality and personal conduct. Throughout Barn Burning the reader sees the moral dilemmas off Sartoris and in large part the story functions as an illustration of his maturation and decision making process. Towards the beginning of the story Sartoris is a somewhat reluctant, but ultimately willing participant in his father’s actions.

He is called before the judge to testify and while he ultimately isn’t forced to speak to the judge, Sartoris is committed to helping his father and concealing the truth of his actions. The story shows his internal dilemma about his father’s action, and by the end of it Sartoris turns his father in because he disagrees with his actions. Zender characterizes his actions as such, “Sartys final, climactic decision to break away from his father rule is seen as proof of his own ultimate moral correctness against the demonic qualities of Ab (pg. 28).” In conclusion, Faulker adopts a number of literary devices in constructing Barn Burning.

As Jelliffe attests, his use of the dual perspectives of the boy gives insight into his moral dilemma concerning his father. Ferguson shows us that the use of ‘stiff’ is a leitmotif that adds insight into the father’s personal character. And finally, Zender speaks of the moral journey and change Sartoris makes throughout the story. Works Cited Ferguson, James. Faulkners Barn Burning. Southern Literary Journal. 20(1), 119-1121. Retrieved December 31st, 2009, from Project MUSE database Jelliffe, R. Rio. Obscuritys myriad components: the theory and practice of William Faulkner.

University of Tennessee Press, 1991. Zender, Karl F. "Barn Burning." A William Faulkner Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert W. Hamblin and Charles A Peek. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999.