“Barn Burning” by William Faulkner

-One of the most important figures in American literature.

-Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.
-Most of works are set in his native Mississippi and are thus classified as Southern Literature akin to
Mark Twain, Truman Capote’s works etc. works.
-Was unable to join the United States army due to his height and so changed his last name from Falkner
to Faulkner and joined the Canadian Royal Flying Corps.
-Most of his initial works were unsuccessful financially and he had to take up work as a screenwriter in
Hollywood.
-Although he never was a participant in fighting during either of the World Wars, his works carry the
modernist feel. Stream of consciousness, long meandering sentences add this feeling.
-Died in 1962 of a heart attack.

Considered sort of a part of the “Snopes Trilogy.” Distinctive, meandering syntax. Dialogue written in the
regional dialect.

Sartoris Snopes is at his father’s trial. His father, an oppressive kind, has been accused of burning down
one Mr. Harris’s barn. He is acquitted, though, due to lack of evidence, but asks Snopes’s family to leave
the town. On their way back home form court, a boy hits Sartoris and bloodies him. His father, however,
shows no compassion and continues preparations in the wagon to leave town. He does not allow the
mother to clean him up either. Late at night that day, the father wakes Sartoris up. He accuses Sartoris
of planning to tell the judge about the truth and beats him. At their new workplace the father, in rage,
soils an expensive rug of the new master Major De Spain. When asked to clean it, Snopes knowingly
ruins the rug by using a harsh stone. After a confrontation where the father, Snopes, refuses to pay for
the rug, De Spain takes him to court. Sartoris defends Snopes at the trial. However, the judge mistakenly
assumes that Snopes burned the rug in addition to soiling it and orders him to pay thirty bushels.
Snopes, in immense rage, devises a plan to burn down de Spain’s barn. Sartoris obeys him initially but
soon fantasizes about escape. He runs to de Spain and warns him. In the ensuing defense for the barn,
Snopes is killed through guns hot wounds and Sartoris heads down a hill in darkness- not looking back.

Major Theme: Loyalty to Family VS Law

Major Symbol: Fire(Sartoris’s powerlessness)