ELIT 48C

Class #

23

Is it really “instant”?

Nowadays, it is almost universally assumed that “instant” means “quickly. Obviously, it doesn’t. Google Instant is

another good example of this word being abused.

in·stant   /ˈinstənt/AdjectiveHappening or coming

immediately: "instant

dismissal.”NounA precise moment of

time: “Come here this

instant!”

Dirty FaceShel SilversteinWhere did you get such a dirty face,My darling dirty-faced child?I got it from crawling along in the dirtAnd biting two buttons off Jeremy’s shirt.I got it from chewing the roots of a roseAnd digging for clams in the yard with my nose.I got it from peeking into a dark caveAnd painting myself like a Navajo brave.I got it from playing with coal in the binAnd signing my name in cement with my chin.I got if from rolling around on the rugAnd giving the horrible dog a big hug.I got it from finding a lost silver mineAnd eating sweet blackberries right off the vine.I got it from ice cream and wrestling and tearsAnd from having more fun than you’ve had in years.

AG

EN

DA Lecture “Barn Burning”

oHistorical Context oThemes, and Style.oCharacters and Symbols

Author Introduction:oLangston HughesoZora Neale Hurston

“Barn Burning” by William Faulkner

Lecture: Historical Context

Any discussion of William Faulkner in a historical context necessarily involves a discussion of modernism. In modernism, as we have discussed, we observe a conscious breaking with traditional ideas about style, content, and purpose. Faulkner, like Pound and Fitzgerald, typify the moral atmosphere of modernism, which could be summed up as despair over the condition of humanity in the aftermath of the soul-wrenching and materially devastating First World War (1914-18).

• Modernism is complex, and while some of these formal experimenters rejected traditional values (Pound), others wanted to uphold old values by new means (Eliot).

• Pound's work includes a sustained attack on Judeo-Christian values and embraces the radical relativism of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

• Eliot uses his experimentations to plead for the continued validity of traditional morals in a morally degenerate world.

• Faulkner is closer to Eliot than to Pound, which means that he is formally a modernist while being morally and philosophically a type of traditionalist. Faulkner could even be called a reactionary—and in truth he was reacting, negatively, to much of the transformation taking place in the world of his time.

Style: Syntax The most noticeable feature of Faulkner's style is his sentence structure. His sentences tend to be long, full of interruptions, but work by stringing out seemingly meandering sequences of clauses.

The second sentence of ‘‘Barn Burning’’ offers an example: It is 116 words long and contains between twelve and sixteen clauses, depending on how one parses it out; its content is fluid and sundry, moving from Sarty's awareness of the smell of cheese in the general store through the visual impression made by canned goods on the shelves to the boy's sense of blood loyalty with his accused father.

It is the subjectivity of the content—sense impressions, random emotions and convictions—which reveals the purpose of the syntax, which is to convey experience in the form of an intense stream-of-consciousness as recorded by the protagonist.

The boy, crouched on his nail keg at the back of the crowded room, knew he smelled cheese, and more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind but from the scarlet devils and the silver curve of fish - this, the cheese which he knew he smelled and the hermetic meat which his intestines believed he smelled coming in intermittent gusts momentary and brief between the other constant one, the smell and sense just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief, the old fierce pull of blood.

Revie

w:

Str

eam

of

consc

iousn

ess

According to J. A. Cuddon’s Dictionary of

Literary Terms, stream of

consciousness is a narrative device used in

literature "to depict the

multitudinous thoughts and

feelings which pass through

the mind. Psychologist and

philosopher William James

(brother of Henry James)

coined the phrase in 1890.

This is a common strategy

in modernist works.

Style: Point of ViewFaulkner was a perspectivist: He tells stories from a particular point of view—or sometimes, as in the novels, from many divergent points of view, each with its own insistent emphasis.

‘‘Barn Burning’’ offers a controlled example of perspectivism. Faulkner tells his story primarily from the point of view of young Sarty, a ten-year-old boy. This requires that Faulkner gives us the raw reportage of scene and event that an illiterate ten-year-old would give us, if he could. Thus, Sarty sees the pictures on the labels of the goods in the general store but cannot understand the lettering; adults loom over him, so that he feels dwarfed by them; and he struggles with moral and intellectual categories, as when he can only see Mr. Harris as an "enemy."

There are few departures from this strict perspectivism, but they are telling, as when, in the penultimate paragraph of the tale, an omniscient narrator divulges the truth about Ab’s behavior as a soldier during the Civil War. But even this is a calculated feature of Faulkner's style: the breaking-in of the omniscient narrator is another way of fracturing the continuity of the narrative, of reminding readers that there are many perspectives, including a transcendental one in which all facts are known to the author. Sharing Sarty's immediate impressions and judgments forges a strong bond between the boy and the reader.

Style: SettingThe setting of ‘‘Barn Burning’’ is in the post-Civil War South, in which a defeated and in many ways humiliated society is trying to hold its own against the Northern victor. This South has retreated into plantation life and small-town existence, and it maintains in private the social hierarchy that characterized the region in its pre-war phase.

Slavery has been abolished, but a vast distance still separates the land-owning Southern aristocracy from the tenant-farmers and bonded workers who do the trench-labor required by the plantation economy.

The Snopeses are itinerant sharecroppers, who move from one locale to another, paying for their habitation in this or that shack by remitting part of the crop to the landlord. This is a setting of intense vulnerability and therefore of intense resentment.

“Setting" is a word which needs to be qualified in reference to ‘‘Barn Burning’’ because, as Sarty notes, he has lived in at least a dozen ramshackle buildings on at least a dozen plantations in his ten short years. In a way, then, the story's "setting" is the road, or rather the Snopes' constant removal from one place to another due to Ab's quarreling and violence. The wagon, heaped with miserable chattel, is the setting, as is Abner's egomaniacal personality and Sarty's miserable yet rebellious heart.

Group Discussion

Characters, symbols, and

QHQs

de Spain

Sarty

Abner Snopes

Lennie Snopes

Fire

The soiled rug

Blood

Chara

cters de SpainSartyAbner SnopesLennie Snopes

Abner Snopes: Name analysis

Abner is a biblical name which means “Father of light.” While the name itself has a positive connotation, the father in this story literally is a “Father of light,” for he burns barns of his masters.According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Snopes family are “recurring characters in the Yoknapatawpha novels and stories of William Faulkner,” in which “Faulkner contrast[s] the verminlike rapacity of most of the Snopes family with the failing old order of the Sartoris clan.” While Abner Snopes is depicted as Faulkner’s hallmark villain, his son, whose first name is Sartoris, represents a hint of sanity within the broken family.

“Then with the same deliberation he turned; the boy watched him pivot on the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag round the arc of the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear. His father never looked at it, he never once looked down at the rug” (805).This passage shows how much Abner despises the wealth and power that his new master, Major de Spain, possesses. Ruining de Spain’s expensive rug with horse poo-poo is Abner’s way of expressing his frustration. Furthermore, leaving the “final long and fading smear” on the rug even after Miss Lula shows her disgust indicates Abner’s refusal to conform to social expectations.

Abner Snopes: Attitude/Behavior

SartyBarn Burning is not written in the first person perspective, but Faulkner shares the inside of the character, especially Colonel Sartoris Snopes’s. We can tell the boy’s characterization by reading them: “[When his father called his son] For a moment the boy thought too that the man meant his older brother until Harris said, “Not him. The little one. The boy,” … and, he felt no floor under his bare feet; he seemed to walk beneath the palpable weight of the grim turning faces” (1). He does not want to stand in front of the people. We see he’s in an uncomfortable situation. We also have the physical description of the boy: “[Colonel Sartoris Snopes is] crouching, small for his age … in patched and faded jeans even too small for him” (1). Apparently, in this part, we can find that he is from a poor family. This description followed by a dialogue with the justice. It also tells the boy’s personality:“What’s your name, boy?” the justice said. “Colonel Sartoris Snopes,” the boy whispered. “Hey?” the Justice said. “Talk louder.”He’s lack of self-confidence; he is afraid of roaring his voice.

Sym

bols FireThe soiled rug

Blood

Blo

od

Blood is a profound symbol in this story,

but it’s not stressing

the typical life meaning. In this case,

blood is all about heritage, sacrifice, and, of course, violence.

The S

oile

d R

ug

The soiled rug works as a symbol

to represent both the upper class

and lower class. Abnes Snopes

forces himself into the de Spain

home and onto the expensive rug,

permanently tarnishing the rug

with his filth. This could suggest

that the lower class is “filthy,” but

obviously only at first glance—this

suggestion is refuted well by Sarty

who represents a good and

innocent child in the working class.

In a less general perspective, the

rug symbolizes the way that Abner

forces himself onto others, just as

he did by allowing his hogs to run

into another woman’s yard. He

refuses to keep to himself.

Fire

Fire symbolizes Snopes’

chance to get a grasp of power

and authority. By torching

another person’s property,

Snopes is in control. Throughout the story, Snopes

is always working for someone

more powerful than him, and

once he uses fire, he is the one

who has the power. Revenge

and power are represented by

fire here, and for Snopes, who

is a very bitter, angry man, a

brief taste of power is all he’ll

ever have.

QHQ: “Barn Burning”

1. What compels Abner Snopes to burn barns?

2. What are the underlying issues which causes the Father to act the way he does?

3. Is Abner anti-social? Or does he represent the evil of humankind?

4. Are Abner and his actions effective in making a point about the class systems present in this world?

QHQ: “Barn Burning”

1.Are the sisters afraid of Abner?

2.Why is it that the only animal used to describe the siblings, both sisters and the brother, is a cow?

The twins’ docile nature has nothing to do with patience but with an udder lack of caring combined with extreme laziness

That is how you milk a joke!

QHQ: “Barn Burning”

1. Why did Faulkner make the narration so ambiguous that it is difficult to figure out which character’s mind you are in? Is there a reason there is very little reference to the character’s names?

2. Why does Faulkner repeat the word “stoop”?

3. Does Faulkner attempt to blur the line between “good” and “evil” by adding the complexity of family loyalty?

4. Are familial ties enough to justify the violation of morality?

QHQ: “Barn Burning”

1.What does Sarty running away from the burning barn symbolize?

2.Does Sartoris love his father?

3.Why is Sarty so loyal to his father, given that his father treats him so poorly?

4.What makes Sarty finally turn against his Father, given his previous loyalty to the family?

5.Did his father actually die or did Sarty only think so because of the shots fired?

Author Introduction Langston Hughes

Few authors of the twentieth century are more significant than Langston Hughes. He is assured his status by his many contributions to literature.

• The length of his career: 1921-1967• The variety of his output: articles, poems, short

stories, dramas, novels, and history texts.• His influence on three generations of African

American writers: from the Harlem Renaissance through the Civil Rights Movement

• His concern for the “ordinary” African American: The subject of his work

• His introduction of the jazz idiom: the quality of black colloquial speech and the rhythms of jazz and the blues.

During his long career Hughes was harshly criticized by blacks and whites. Because he left no single masterwork, such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) or Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), and because he consciously wrote in the common idiom of the people, academic interest in him grew only slowly. The importance of his influence on several generations of African American authors is, however, indisputable and widely acknowledged.

Author Introduction Zora Neale Hurston

A novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston was the prototypical authority

on black culture from the Harlem Renaissance.

Zora Neale Hurston combined literature with anthropology. She first gained attention with her short stories such as "John Redding Goes to Sea.” After several years of anthropological research financed through grants and fellowships, Zora Neale Hurston's first novel Jonah's Gourd Vine was published in 1934 to critical success. In 1935, her book Mules and Men, which investigated voodoo practices in black communities in Florida and New Orleans, also brought her success. Hurston's greatest novel, Their Eyes Watching God, was published in 1937.

Zora Neale Hurston was a utopian, who held that black Americans could attain sovereignty from white American society and all its bigotry, as proven by her hometown of Eatonville.

Her work did not address the issue of racism of whites, and as this became a emerging theme among black writers in the post World War II era of civil rights, Hurston's literary influence faded.

She further damaged her own reputation by criticizing the civil rights movement and supporting ultraconservative politicians. She died in poverty and obscurity.

Read: Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “I, too, sing America,” and “The Weary Blues”

Post #16: Choose one

• What connections can be made between race and blues music in "The Weary Blues"?

• What do you think it means to have a soul that is deep as rivers?

• How does “I, too, sing America” make you think about what it means to be an American? How is "America" presented in this poem, and how does it make you feel about America?

• Read Zora Neale Hurston: “The Eatonville Anthology” 530-38 and “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” 538-541

Post #17 Choose one

• Community is the primary bond among the stories contained in "The Eatonville Anthology." How does the image of a front porch act as a symbol of the social concept of community? Cite specific incidents from the story that prove this connection.

• How does the narrator's viewpoint direct the reader's understanding and approval of the citizens presented in "The Eatonville Anthology"? Discuss specific examples.

• QHQ: “How it Feels to Be Colored Me”HOMEWORK