“Barn Burning”: Embers of Inequity

William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” presents a story of a young boy and his family struggling to survive in the harsh economic conditions of the South.  The story is set in the early 1900s after the reconstruction and in the decades following the Civil War.  Social and economic conditions of the South are polarized.  Severe discrimination, distinct class divisions, and poverty have created bitterness and strife between those who own property and those who do not.  Known respectively as the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the resulting hierarchical separation of landowner and laborer is a key component to the economic system of capitalism.  The Snopes family, depicted in Faulkner’s story, represents the pain and exploitation experienced by those locked into labor in this system.  These socioeconomic conditions create a thick ideological smoke that obscures and blurs the lines of power and the degrees of fragmentation affecting citizens in the South.  When observed through the flame of a Marxist literary critic’s perspective, “Barn Burning” becomes a blazing effigy for the haves and have-nots.

The story starts in media res and immediately establishes not only the scene and setting, but also the presence of an economic base and superstructure:  “The store in which the Justice of the Peace’s court was sitting smelled of cheese” (Faulkner 217).  The superstructure of the court and the laws it oversees acts as the overriding authority in the text.  The court within a store signals that capitalism is prevalent and tightly linked to the superstructure of the society.  Sarty, the young boy of the story, is present in the courtroom/store where his father, Abner, has been summoned.  The reader learns immediately that Sarty is in a state of hunger:  “[He looked at]…dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind…” (217).  The boy’s hunger reveals that he is poor and cannot afford to purchase the food in the store.  The fact that he cannot read indicates that he is illiterate.  These issues of poverty and illiteracy illuminate the unfair hierarchy of class differences.  The Justice of the Peace, the shop owner, and the farmer who initiated litigation against Sarty’s father represent the bourgeoisie.  Sarty and his father represent the lower and disadvantaged position of the proletariat.  The resulting segregation creates dissent among the disadvantaged, and like Sarty’s empty stomach, rumbles of protest erupt.

Abner Snopes, advised by the Justice to leave the country, moves his family to a new area.  Unable to purchase his own land, he has hired the family on as sharecroppers.  The seven members of the Snopes family arrive as tenants and move into a “paintless two-room house” provided by the landlord (220).  This tiny house quickly comes to symbolize the chasm between the marginalized and the favored groups when Abner and Sarty make a visit to the home of the landowner.   Hidden beyond a tall fence, lined with a grove of oak and cedar trees, a gated drive leads up to the house.  Here the symbolism found in the contrast between the small sharecropper’s home and a mansion fortressed to protect its wealth and keep away undesirables mirrors the line of separation between the classes. 

Typical of the capitalist system, this line of separation allowed the landowners to manipulate the sharecroppers.  By hiring uneducated and impoverished workers and paying them very little to work the land, the bourgeoisie were able to increase their wealth.  Increased wealth meant more power, continued control of production, and access to education.  The bourgeoisie used interpellation to keep the social and economic ideological systems that favored them in place and strong.  Challenged with basic survival needs, workers often were not aware of the manipulation that was taking place.  This false consciousness worked in the favor of those in power, and the cycle of control continued.  However, a few of those who labored—like the Snopes—saw through the gray mist of manipulation.

Even at the very young age of ten, Sarty recognizes his place in the cycle.  “Enemy, enemy,” he thinks to himself, the pain of exclusion and isolation boiling within him (218).  He knows that there is little opportunity for his family to rise above their current status in society.  His father, Abner, knows it too.  However, the reader quickly learns that Abner is not going to take it without a fiery fight.

Although Abner’s behavior is extreme—burning barns—he stands out as a man who refuses to be a victim of the false consciousness of the time.  Where other laborers maintain their stations in life without question, he acts out in protest, fueling his rage at those in power.  He is fighting to resist the interpellation that seeks to keep him in his lower station.  Demanding acknowledgement that the system that binds him is not fair, he acts out by burning the barns of those who spark his anger.

Symbolically, the landowners’ barns represent prosperity.  The barns signify that the landowners have sufficient wealth—beyond meeting their housing needs—that they are left with expendable income.  This contrasts sharply with those who struggle to meet the basic physiological needs of food, water, and shelter that are essential for survival.  Those struggling to meet these fundamental needs find themselves powerless in a capitalistic society.

A Marxist analysis of this text exposes how Abner seeks to balance the power distribution.  Striking out against the dominant and privileged groups, Abner attempts to break the ties that bind and restrain the oppressed.  The reader is given a glimpse into the character of a man who would act to incite revolution:

There was something about his wolflike independence and even courage when the advantage was at least neutral which impressed strangers, as if they got from his latent ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest lay with his. (210)

Abner’s actions serve to call attention to and stoke the cause for the rights of those victimized by capitalism.

In “Barn Burning,” the reader is introduced to the concept that eventually, the workers in a capitalistic society recognize that they are being covertly manipulated.  When this flame of thought is ignited, a struggle between opposing sides ensues.  These tensions and contradictions lead to conflict, which eventually leads to a revolution.  Dialectical materialism describes the synthesis that ultimately brings about change in history.  Seen from a Marxist perspective, Abner Snopes is a revolutionist, carrying the torch of class struggle and waging war for equal rights.

While the Marxist literary criticism perspective illuminates the economic effects on a society, the feminist literary criticism perspective seeks to illumine the ideologies that devalue and marginalize women.  Both perspectives attempt to explore the inequities and alienation that occur when members of a society are discriminated against and oppressed.  Since most of the production and distribution of literature has been controlled by men, feminist critics have struggled to find a voice.  Like Abner’s Marxist struggle against those in power in “Barn Burning,” women have struggled against those in power as well.  Seeking to revolutionize the female presence in all aspects of literature, feminist criticism attempts to break down the male/female barriers that exist in an androcentric culture and to provide women expression and participation in the literature experience.

In contrast to the presence of men in the text, a close review of “Barn Burning” reveals a limited representation of women.  Although the Snopes family contains four women characters, they are made evident in very few lines of the text.  When Faulkner does acknowledge their presence through narration and through their relationships with Abner, his language reveals a patriarchal and male-centered ideology that not only devalues women; it enters the realm of misogyny.

Repeatedly Faulkner depicts the women in the text unfavorably:  “The two sisters got down, big, bovine, in a flutter of cheap ribbons…” (220).  Further describing them as “hulking,” “stooped,” “broad,” and “lethargic,” Faulkner’s disgust for women smolders in the language he uses in the story (219-23).  Rhetorically, this language maintains and promotes negative attitudes towards women.  Language, as the basis of the symbolic order phase of human development, carries with it the beliefs and values of those in power.  In a patriarchal society, that power is held by men.  Socialization through language occurs, and females (and minorities) are relegated to an inferior position.  As in the false consciousness of Marxism, this ideology is often unspoken and unrecognized by those whose value and existence is being compromised.

Therefore, although Abner could be considered a hero from a Marxist’s analysis of “Barn Burning,” he comes to symbolize the complete opposite from a feminist analysis of the text.  The character’s extreme anti-woman and anti-minority attitude reveals a destructive disregard for members of humanity that the patriarchal ideal minimizes.  Abner’s misogyny and bigotry is revealed in his interactions with the female and minority characters in the story.  In the scene where Abner travels to the home of the landlord, his first interaction is with the Negro butler of the household.  Without even pausing at the door, Abner says, “Get out of my way, nigger” (222).  His hateful language devalues, demoralizes, and extinguishes any power the black man may have possessed.  As Abner moves his way into the house, Miss Lula, the female cook (in a traditional female role), comes out of the kitchen and announces that the landlord is not home.  Abner does not speak nor even look at her.  This behavior indicates that for Abner, she is not worthy of acknowledgement because to him, she does not exist. 

A close analysis of this behavior discloses that although Abner himself represents the lower class of people economically, he maintains a status well above women—where he does have a voice and he does have power.  A feminist analysis further reveals that both minorities and women maintain little or no status.  This stratification of status is illustrated when upon entering Miss Lula’s place of employment (and possibly her home), Abner completely ignores her, negating her voice, and therefore denying her power.  This issue of voice and denial of power comes up again in a scene where Sarty is chopping wood behind the house and listening to the women in his family converse.  He notices “…the flat loud voices of the two girls emanated an incorrigible idle inertia” (222).  Symbolically, in this instance as well as in a broader sense, Faulkner removes any possible power from the voices, speech, and language of women. 

The result is that the women of the text, as pointed out from a feminist evaluation, remain unheard.  As the story progresses, the tension rises when Abner’s anger grows and rages like an uncontrollable wildfire.  With destruction on his mind, he pours the lamp oil into a five-gallon kerosene can that he can carry with him to the landlord’s barn.  “Abner!  No!  No!  Oh, God.  Oh, God.  Abner!” pleads his wife.  But as she reaches to tug his arm, he throws her back hard into the wall.  This demonstrates not only the physical power that Abner holds over his wife, but the height of destructive power he achieves over those he hates when he controls fire.  The “hopeless despair” on her face as she slams against the wall speaks volumes in the scene (227).  The wife’s “hopeless despair” is a symbol for the suffering experienced by women and minorities throughout time.  The fact that the wife has no say in his actions—which will directly affect her and her family—indicates that she has no power in the situation.  From a feminist literary critic’s perspective, the denial of power is at the root of the subjugation of women and minorities.  Feminists seek to expose the fact that along with power, women and minorities have been denied basic civil liberties, acknowledgment, respect, equal representation, and value.  By calling attention to these issues, advocates for feminism hope to torch the ideology and ideological structures that distribute power to a select few and to ignite the promise of a search for equity.

Another prominent power issue in a feminist literary critic’s perspective is how women are sexualized.  Often the sexuality of women is cast in a negative or demeaning light in a patriarchal society.  Sex is frequently equated with power, and in order to prevent female acquisition of power, sex and the pleasure of sex in the past have often been denied.  In “Barn Burning,” Faulkner makes one allusion to the sexuality of women; that allusion is made to disgrace and deface any sexual power that a woman might have.  The young boy, Sarty, walks past his sisters and sees them sitting “with spread heavy thighs” (228).  Describing that Sarty notices his two sisters in this way carries a connotation of incest, which causes the reader to immediately experience a sense of discomfort and disgust.  Further describing their upper legs as fat and “spread” leaves the reader feeling that the girls are cheap and whore-like.  Supporters of feminism would be quick to point out that these connotations are the result of the society’s forced symbolic order and patriarchal ideology.  That is to say, that fat, spread legs under a different assimilation, could mean something completely different.

Assimilation is the kindling to the ideologies that support the Marxist and feminist literary critics’ perspectives.  For the Marxist critic, the assimilation into the social structures in “Barn Burning” is the direct result of the capitalistic environment of the South.  This environment leads to the economic and political power held by the landowner, merchant, and judge characters in the story.  Denied economic and political power, the working class, such as the Snopes family, becomes marginalized and assimilated into a life of labor.  In his efforts to reject the manipulation of capitalism, Abner champions his cause through his inflammatory actions.  For the feminist critic, the assimilation into the social structures in “Barn Burning” is the result of gender orientation.  Males are given the prominent roles and authority in the text.  Although many of the male characters find themselves in inferior positions, they maintain their strength in terms of voice, physicality, and fire.

The significance of reviewing William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” from these two literary theories is found in the degree of the violation of human and civil rights.  Marxist criticism calls for awareness of the inequities and suffering experienced under polarized social and economic conditions that result in class division and exploitation.  Feminist criticism must reconcile these conditions as well as the devastating effects of a silent and powerful symbolic order of moral codes, values, and beliefs that place women at the bottom of a male-defined hierarchy.  In the text, women not only occupy the lower class economically, they occupy a lower station within that economic class.  Faulkner’s negative, negating, and cruel depictions of the women are of primary concern in a feminist exploration of the text.  Where Abner vocalizes and acts out his anger, the women of the text are mute.  Without a voice or even a sound to represent them, their presence is reduced to ashes by the ideology of a patriarchal and androcentric culture. 

The goal of feminist critics is to establish a basis of equality between men and women.  Advocating for inclusion, expression, and respect throughout all aspects of the literature experience—reading, writing, representation—feminists call for revolution to close this gap of inequity between genders.  Not unlike Abner’s call for economic revolution under the confines of capitalism, feminists call for revolution for all people who are persecuted and discriminated against regardless of economics, race, class, or gender.  Abner’s actions against minorities and women establish him as an oppressor of human liberties and civil rights—a tyrant, who seeks to subjugate minorities and extinguish the voices of women. 

This silencing of women’s voices in an androcentric culture symbolizes their emasculation.  With little if any value attributed to being female, women in effect are castrated by the fact that they cannot be and are not male.  From this point of reasoning, the focus of a feminist approach to literary criticism becomes one of anatomy—specifically the lack of a penis—those who have and those who have-not.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. “Barn Burning.” Collected Stories of William
         Faulkner. 1950. Comp. Ann B.