Barn Burning and Soldier’s Home: Critical Analysis of Writing

William Meyer in his essay: Faulkner, Hemingway, et al.: The Emersonian Test of American Authorship, argues that it is impossible to be a great Southern writer and a great American writer simultaneously, because the very essence of America is a New World victorious hypervisuality and the essence of the South is an Old World aristocratic lyrici

The boy, crouched on his nail keg at the back of the crowded room, knew he smelled cheese, and more: form where he sat he could see that ranked shelves close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, […] the smell and sense just a little fear because mostly of despair and grief, the old fierce pull of blood. (Faulkner 149)

Clearly the narrator is omniscient and attentive to details and excellent at portraying the exact setting of the story. The narrator is also very poetic; in the above quotation and many others throughout Barn Burning he invokes sounds, feelings, smells and many other elements that play on the readers’ all five senses. This interesting technique will be discussed further in the later section of this composition.

The narrator doesn’t only tell the story, but he also interprets Sarty’s pain and makes the reader aware of its existence in a form of a conflict. For example in the opening scene of the story in the courthouse young Sarty is faced with a dilemma: to tell the truth or lie and protect his own “blood”. Faulkner often signals these conflicts italicizing the text and even putting it in parentheses and by doing so separates Sarty even more from the narrator. In the first paragraph of Barn Burning the reader meets the first conflict and that is Sarty’s acceptance of his father’s enemy as his own: “our enemy he thought in that despair; ourn! Mine and his both! He’s my father!” (Faulkner 148) This conflict between Sarty’s own identity and his father is present throughout the story but always the narrator attempts to portray and interpret the pain of young Sarty. Notice the choice of words in the above quotation the boy is in “despair”, later he will also be in mental and physical pain and will not even be able to “see the Justice face” (Faulkner 149)

Another possible explanation is to consider symbolism in Barn Burning, especially symbolism attached to the names of the characters and symbolism attached to sounds and smells. Going back to the opening scene in the court house, it is, according to the narrator, filled with the smell of cheese and fish. Furthermore, Sarty’s reaction to this smell suggests that it is a rather unpleasant smell: “the smell and sense just a little fear because mostly of despair and grief, the old fierce pull of blood.” (Faulkner 149) This smell then can be a symbolism and a triggering device to illustrate evil in the example of the courthouse and warmth and coziness in the example with the smell of coffee when the narrator describes Abner’s house.

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Some topics in this essay:
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