Transcript Barn Burning - Amazon Web Services

Barn Burning
By
William Faulkner
Source: www.enotes.com
Themes
Alienation and Loneliness
• In ‘‘Barn Burning,’’ Faulkner depicts a child, on
the verge of moral awareness, who finds himself
cut off from the larger social world of which he is
growing conscious
• This sense of alienation takes root, moreover, in
Sarty's relation with his father, who should be the
moral model and means of entry of the child into
the larger world.
• Because of his father's criminal
recklessness, Sarty finds himself,
in the first part of the story, the
object of an insult, and he
attacks a boy who, in more
ordinary circumstances, might
be a school-companion or a
friend.
• His father has taught him to
regard others as the “enemy.”
• Mr. Harris, the bringer of the
arson charge, is thus ‘‘our enemy
... hisn and ourn.’’
• In fact, Mr. Harris is simply a man who
has been mistreated by an egomaniacal
provocateur.
• The story concludes with Sarty alone
on a hilltop at night, watching the stars.
• This, too, reflects the boy's loneliness,
and lack of social ties, but it also
suggests his liberation from his family
on the basis of a moral insight which
just possibly signifies a bridge to link
him with the greater social world.
Anger and Hatred
• Abner Snopes is anger embodied, ready to take
offense over any interaction with other people,
but especially with those whom he sees as his
social superiors (which means most of them,
since he lives at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder).
• Ab is locked into a hell of personal revenge,
and his viciousness appears to have played a
large part in the misery of his family.
• Readers witness the anger
of others, too, but often this
is anger with a cause, as in
the case of the exasperated
Mr. Harris, or even the
haughty Major de Spain.
• Sarty also experiences
anger—at his father—
precisely on account of the
father's maniacal anger at
the world.
Loyalty and Betrayal
• Abner's crude psychological stratagem for gaining
the complicity of his family in his bizarre way of
life is to press his claim of family ties, of loyalty.
• This surfaces in Sarty's interior monologue, in the
first court scene, concerning enemies, ‘‘mine and
hisn both.’’
• But this represents only a degraded view of
loyalty, since there is no moral requirement to be
loyal to particular persons without qualification,
not even to parents.
• Abner's criminality absolves
Sarty morally from
maintaining loyalty, a view to
which Sarty himself eventually
comes.
• In a technical sense, Sarty
betrays his father to Major de
Spain, but in a larger moral
sense, Sarty expresses his real
loyalty to normative ethics, in
which revenge is an aberration
and aggressive violence a sin.
Morals and Morality
• Morality has to do with reciprocity among
individuals and is encapsulated in ‘‘The
Golden Rule,’’ that you should do unto others
what you would have others do unto you.
• Ab Snopes persistently and willfully flouts
morality so conceived.
• He beats his son, tyrannizes his wife, picks
fights with people who have done him no
harm, and is an arsonist.
• He was equally rabid and self-serving as a
soldier, for he enlisted solely to make the best
of the opportunity for looting.
• Morality is expressed ethically in the form of
law, which requires an objective sorting-out of
truth.
• ''Barn Burning'' traces Sarty's passage from
immersion in the egocentric Hell of his father's
life to his espousal of morality and law.
• This is also a passage from the natural state of
animal solidarity to the cultural state of
concession to institutions.
Order and Disorder
• Abner Snopes's life, symbolized by his
constant removal to new quarters on account
of his quarrels with everyone and by the
random wretchedness of the family's meager
belongings, is a life of violent disorder.
• Ab cannot integrate himself into any aspect of
the social matrix, and even as a soldier he was
out for himself.
• Ab's tendency toward
barn-burning sums up
his warlike attitude
toward social structure.
• Sarty trades this disorder
for order, symbolized
most powerfully during
the first courtroom
scene, when Mr. Harris
points to him with the
enunciation that this boy
knows the truth.
• The objective truth, the account of
what really happened between Abner
and Mr. Harris, is the first revelation
to Sarty of an order obtained by the
individual's subordinating himself to
abstract concepts of existence and
proper behavior.
• In this sense, Sarty's denunciation of
his father to Major de Spain is a cry
for order, for the liberation of his
family from the infernal disorder of
Ab's criminal tyranny.
Summary of Themes
• Alienation and Loneliness
• Anger and Hatred
• Loyalty and Betrayal
• Morals and Morality
• Order and Disorder
The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg
By
Mark Twain
Themes
Hypocrisy
• Several narrative elements render the honest reputation
of Hadleyburg suspect from the beginning.
• The narrator describes a town that ‘‘care[s] not a rap for
strangers or their opinions,’’ while a couple of its
residents so severely offend a stranger that he feels
compelled to take revenge against the whole town.
• After the stranger delivers the sack of gold to the
Richardses, Mary becomes anxious about theft,
exclaiming,"Mercy on us, and the door not locked!’’
• She regains composure only after she ‘‘listens awhile
for burglars.’’
• The suspicion, fear, and malice evinced by
these events belie the town's "unsmirched''
honesty and suggest that an imperfect reality
lurks beneath the surface.
• The real nature of Hadleyburg becomes
apparent as the story progresses.
• In the privacy of their homes the townsfolk
slander each other, revealing the mutual hatred
that exists in the community.
• For instance, Goodson ranks as the ‘‘besthated,’’ followed by Burgess.
• Edward's silence not only causes an
undeserved scandal for Burgess, but his
deception also leads the townsfolk to blame
Goodson for Burgess's rapid departure from
the town.
• In addition, Edward hides his involvement in
the scandal from Mary, because he fears that
she would expose him.
• He even admits that he only warned Burgess
after he was sure that his actions were
undetectable.
• Edward says, ‘‘[A]fter a few days I saw that no
one was going to suspect me [of warning
Burgess], and after that I got to feeling glad I
did it.’’
• Edward's revelations to Mary suggest that even
before the tempting sack of gold appeared, a
complex web of self-interest and deceit
ensnared Hadleyburg that contradicts its
boastful claims of thorough integrity.
• Hypocrisy, not honesty, defines the town's
character, since the residents preach honesty
but practice self-interest and deceit.
Morality, Ethics and the
Innateness of Human
Sinfulness
• The story of Hadleyburg teaches a moral
lesson to both characters and readers alike.
• The town's secrets raise a series of moral
questions.
• For instance, would the Richardses have been
right to keep the gold since it would not have
"hurt" anybody?
• Was it ethical for Edward to conceal the
evidence that could have cleared Burgess?
• Mary justifies her husband's actions by
reasoning that they could ill-afford to bring
public disapproval upon themselves.
• Furthermore, she claims that as long as
Burgess did not "know that [Edward] could
have saved him .. . that makes [withholding the
information] a great deal better.''
• Edward soothes his guilty conscience by
warning Burgess of impending trouble, but
only when he ensures that ‘‘no one was going
to suspect me.’’
• Such decisions demonstrate the self-serving
interests of human nature, which tends to make
unethical choices when confronted by difficult
situations, and as Edward's character
illustrates, cowardice further complicates a
lack of ethical conviction.
• Besides Edward and Mary, other townsfolk
succumb to the same temptation offered by the
sack of gold, including the Coxes, the Wilsons,
and the Billsons.
• In this way, the story represents an honest,
universal response of human nature to the
temptation of "easy" money.
• Although the residents of Hadleyburg are not
consciously predisposed to sin, their collective
response suggests the innate weakness of
human nature.
The Eden Myth and the
“Fortunate Fall”
• Critics have described ‘‘The Man That Corrupted
Hadleyburg’’ as a story of ‘‘the fortunate fall.'‘
• In other words, the moral regeneration comes
through learning from past mistakes.
• Thematically similar to the biblical story of Adam
and Eve and John Milton's Paradise Lost, the
town's debacle results in improved understanding,
or as Mary says, protected and untested virtue is
as sturdy as a house of cards.
• Although the townsfolk lose their "Eden," in
the process they learn a practical means to
achieve honesty.
• After their hypocrisy is exposed, Hadleyburg
will seek out temptation in order to test and
solidify their virtue, which the town's modified
motto indicates: ‘‘Lead us into temptation.’’
• The reformed town realizes that its survival
depends on trading its smug standard of
honesty for an authentic, provable version.
Individual versus Society
• Mary and Edward's dilemma in ‘‘The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg'' illuminates the influence
of communal values on the lives of individuals,
especially how those values override individual
judgment.
• The town hall scene dramatizes the destructive
and seductive nature of conforming to a group
identity.
• Assuming a "mob" or "herd" mentality, the crowd
condemns or praises at the least provocation.
• For instance, when Wilson accuses Billson of
plagiarism, the crowd erupts and ‘‘submerge[s
Wilson] in tides of applause,’’ but as soon as they
hear of Wilson's fraud, they break into a
‘‘pandemonium of delight’’ and applause becomes
ridicule.
• In "The Role of Satan in 'The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg,'’’ Henry Rule likens the
crowd's behavior each time it starts jeering loudly
to the unthinking and impulsive behavior of the
‘‘automatic dog’’ that ‘‘bark[s] itself crazy.’’
• Rule's comparison places the crowd's reactions on
the level of animals, which instinctively respond
to any external stimuli.
• Despite the unappealing portrait of the
Hadleyburg community as a mob, the
townsfolk discourage nonconformity, as in the
cases of Burgess and Goodson.
• On the other hand, conformity reaps benefits,
as in the case of the Richardses, who yield to
public opinion and net $38,500!
• Twain ironically represented the real cost of
Mary and Edward's "success" by describing
their anguished consciences and consequent
decay into physical and psychological frailty.
• Although the story seems to discourage
conformity to communal standards, it does not
necessarily condone the pursuit of individualism.
• Instead, the story turns a cynical eye toward
conditions of American society, which advocates
individuality and liberty in principle, but in
actuality limits personal freedoms under the guise
of community standards.
• In ‘‘The Lie that I Am I: Paradoxes of Identity in
Mark Twain's 'Hadleyburg,''' Earl F. Briden and
Mary Prescott claim that the story attempts "to
embody a turn-of-the-century American society in
which ... a personal, original, and undetermined,
freely-willing selfhood could scarcely be found.’’
Summary of Themes
• Hypocrisy
• Morality, Ethics and the Innateness
of Human Sinfulness
• The Eden Myth and the “Fortunate
Fall”
• Individual versus Society