The South as Depicted in the Short Stories Barn Burning and The Life You Save - Essay Example

The South as Depicted in the Short Stories "Barn Burning and "the Life You Save" William Faulkner and Flannery OConnor both create an understanding of the South as they knew it and we see through their stories how it affected the people of the times. In "Barn Burning" the reader meets Sarty and his father Abner who has burned down a barn and had to move to another farm. Abner is very upset because of the circumstances surrounding his being at this new place. Faulkner presents the traditional South and the agricultural values during this time (Moore and Akers, 1999, 10). The story takes place after the Civil War and during the Southern Reconstruction. The South is dealing with the humiliation of defeat from the Northern states (Moore and Akers, 10). and many of the old Southerners have lost their homes and been reduced to itinerant farmers. Abner carries this humiliation with him every time he goes to a new farm. The story begins after the first barn has been burned and he is in the courtroom with his son Sarty. Sarty almost tells the truth and later is hit by his father for "almost" telling the truth (Faulkner, 1939, 268). Abner is also angry because slavery has been abolished and he has to do the work that former slaves once did. In the hierarch of the South at this time Abner is on the "lowest echelon of white postwar Southern Society" and he doesnt like it (Moore and Aker, 11). The life of the itinerant farmer was difficult after the war because a family had to move from one plantation to another to have a place to live and work. The challenge was that as an itinerant sharecropper they had no money except for what they worked for in each place and part of what they earned was given back to the plantation owner for the opportunity to live in a shack on the plantation and work (Moore and Akers, 10). These families were very poor. In the story Abner is portrayed as a very broken man and the brokenness is symbolized by the battered stove, the broken beds and chairs and a clock that wouldnt run anymore (Faulkner, 266). This is all the family has and the mother holds on to these possessions as whats left of her dowry. Abner is very aware of the differences between the Southern aristocracy, the tenant farmers and the bonded workers who are the trench labor (Moore and Akers, 11). He know hes at the very bottom of the ladder and hes angry because even "niggers" are further up on the hierarchy than he is; so his solution is to keep burning barns. Abners anger moves to its height once he reaches the de Spains and sees all the lushness of the house and of the land. We see that this guy isnt a very nice man, but he may be typical of some of the itinerant farmers at the time. Faulkner chose to write about the 1930s south and what he saw during the "decade of the Great Depression" (Helpme.com). The story was first published in 1939 for Harpers Magazine. OConnor uses a very different type of South to write about because in all her short stories she writes about a religious South. Her short story "The Life You Save" takes place after WWII and it starts in a similar rural south. They characters meet at an isolated space in a timeless universe and away from the "real" world (OConnor, 2000, 127). The story is about the anti-materialist movement in America that talked about how people were so into money and possessions that they often forgot about others around them (answers.com). The story is based on three basic characters: Lucynell Crater (mother), Lucynell Crater (the daughter) and a "tramp" by the name of Mr. Shiftlet. Mr. Shiftlet comes to the house as a handyman and he basically talks his way into a job. He fixes many things around the house with his eye on an old car that is sitting in the yard. He asks if they drive, but Mrs. Crater responds "that car aint run in fifteen year…the day my husband died it quit running." (OConnor, 1946, 146). As the story goes on the reader realizes that there is something more here that Mrs. Crater wants from Mr. Shiftlet; she wants him to marry her daughter. The daughter, also with the mothers name, is developmentally about 15 years old, but shes about 30 according to the narrator and its interesting because the narrator says, "The girl was nearly thirty but because of her innocence it was impossible to guess" (OConnor, 1946, 151). They come to an agreement and Mr. Shiflet marries the daughter and gets the car. The car is important to the story and to the fact that OConnor is speaking out against the materialism of this time period when people were buying cars to see the United States. The car was a symbol of mobility and it changed peoples lifestyles during this time. The sad part is that he takes Lucynell (the daughter) to a roadside diner and leaves her there, asleep, with no one and no way to tell anyone where she lives. For OConnor, this is his chance to do the right thing where God is concerned. According to Deignan, this says that this is "Shiftlets pivotal choice to refer to his new bride as a hitchhiker and abandon her reveals that he has turned his back on redemption" (Deignan, 2000, 3). This theme for OConnor also moves into the aspects of the storm when Shiftlet makes a plea to God to "break forth and wash the slime from this earth!" (OConnor, 1946, 156) and according to Deignan, Shiftlet "eludes nature and Gods grace" because he has done these horrible things (left the girl and chosen the car over sensibility) because of his greed for the car. The South is a very different place according to Faulkner and OConnor. They both have challenges with what they see and were able to write about them. A couple things that were interesting were that Abner in "Barn Burning" always burned down barns and not the farm houses. I wondered why and found out that it was because they held livestock and the harvested crops so they would hurt the rich families more economically (Cliffnotes, par. 6). Works Cited "Faulkners Short Stories: Barn Burning Commentary." Cliffnotes Online. 27 April 2008. . Collum, Danny. "Nature and Grace: Flannery OConnor and the Healing of Southern Culture" Sojourners Magazine Online. December 1994-January 1995. 3:10. 21 April 2008. p. 22-24. Read More