After Reading
"Barn Burning"
Here, as in "Everyday Use," a family member has consciously separated from the family, but unlike "Everyday," the character who rejects the family, Sarty, is the character we feel sympathy for. The main difference between Dee (who rejects her family in "Everyday Use") and Sarty is the depth of their character. Dee is all surface: her values are only in the material. Sarty's values runs much deeper. When he turns his back on his family, it's because his burgeoning sense of morality can no longer condone the criminal actions of Abner, his father. For Sarty, this is no easy decision: his "sobbing" (502) at the end of the story suggests the complexity of his feelings about his actions by showing his conflicted emotions. While he has acted on his conscience, it has resulted in tragedy for his family. Dee, like Sarty, rejects her family, but it rests lightly on her mind. At the end of "Everyday," instead of tears, she hides behind her sunglasses (1561) and assumes her usual, self-righteous demeanor. Of course, point of view (as usual) helps shape our conceptions of the characters. Imagine "Everyday" narrated from Dee's point of view instead of her mother's. . . . ? Conversely, imagining "Barn Burning" narrated by Abner, puts a different spin on Sarty's actions. It's obvious that in each case, the author's choice of point of view determines how we interpret the characters.
Similarly, each character's view of justice is connected to their point of view. For instance, Major de Spain, a wealthy member of the old Southern aristocracy, has property – both moveable (rug) and static (barn) to protect – so his view of justice is based on protecting what he has. An upstanding member of the community, his beliefs represent the values upheld by the society at large. In contrast, Abner Snopes, a member of the outlaw and lower class, abides by different rules. The quick reference to his service in the Civil War (he was "shot in the heel on a stolen horse" 49 by the military police), identifies him early in the story as a criminal, as does the opening court scene. In the store/courtroom, Sarty's thoughts reveal his father's guilt: " He aims for me to lie " (491). If Sarty has to lie, than the charge against Abner must be truthful. Abner's desire for justice has an old-testament, retributive flavor. If he feels a wrong has been done to him, he wants revenge. This is made clear in the second courtroom scene. There Abner tries the conventional justice system and sues de Spain, but this attempt to follow society's conventions is short lived. He receives a only partial victory, and directly afterwards, begins planning his own brand of justice.
Abner Snopes's sense of justice is based on his position in society. A member of the lower-class, his view of justice is based, in part, on his wallet. In each of the cases of arson we see in the story, the common factor is money. In the Harris case, it's only after the landlord charges Abner a dollar pound fee for a roaming hog that he burns the barn. Similarly, Abner torches de Spain's barn after the Justice rules against him for five dollars (499). But there are other examples of the class conflict between the share-croppers and tenant farmers and the wealthy landowners who kept them poor. The story takes place in a transition period, the turn of the century, thirty years after the Civil War, when there was a growing tension between the older, antebellum, agrarian wealth and the (as Faulkner calls them in "A Rose for Emily") "rising generation," who no longer respect or pay obeisance to the landed gentry. At least one commentator has noticed that the metallic descriptions of Abner and his apparel – he looked like something "cut ruthlessly from tin" and wore an "ironlike black coat" (495) – not only connote his stubbornness, but also suggest the burgeoning industrial (read "lower") class with its connotations of capitalism and manufacturing as opposed to an older, class-driven agrarianism. Interestingly, Faulkner also refers to de Spain's clothes. In contrast to the metallic description of Abner's coat, de Spain is "linen-clad," a cloth rich with connotations of luxury and leisure – a perfect symbol for the aristocracy. This connection between the lower-classes and industrialism is also illustrated by Abner's reaction to de Spain's mansion. Inside the house (a symbol of the gulf separating the two men) Abner's injured leg moves with "machinelike deliberation" (495), a mechanistic comparison that well suits industrialism's driving force. Lastly, Abner's war record demonstrates his caustic attitude towards the wealthy. Instead of fighting for an abstract "South" which he was born into but did not profit from, Abner spent the war years involved in personal gain, dealing in stealing horses. For him, the antebellum South represents not a lost and lamented way of life, but a time when poor, land-less men like him had no opportunities for financial gain.
In a sense, Abner feels like a slave. After settling down on the de Spain property, he tells his wife, "I reckon I'll have a word with the man that aims to begin to-morrow owning me body and soul for the next eight months" (494). Instead of a free man, he feels like chattel, literally "owned" by his master. This feeling of class difference is intensified after he sees de Spain's house. Scraping his boot outside the house (after smearing it on the rug) he tells Sarty, "Pretty and white, ain't it? . . . That's sweat. Nigger sweat. Maybe it ain't white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat with it" (496). Keenly aware of the source of the aristocracy's wealth, slavery, he wants no part of it – and he sees the current relationship between the rich landlords and the poor sharecroppers as analogous to the relationship between a master and slave. While his feelings about the aristocracy are only hinted at verbally, the feces laden boot he drags across the rug is powerful mute commentary on his view of the upper-classes.
Through Abner's reactions to Harris and de Spain, and his treatment of his own family, Faulkner paints a picture of an ignorant, cruel man who nonetheless retains an inner core of pride that must be acknowledged. To paraphrase Dylan Thomas, Abner will not go gentle into that good night; he will defiantly rage against, not the dying of the light, but the last gasp of Southern aristocracy. He is a complex character who the reader is meant to both admire and revile. As the narrator notes, "There was something about his wolf-like independence and even courage when the advantage was at least neutral which impressed strangers" (493). The problem for Abner is that the "advantage" was never neutral: a poor white sharecropper could never compete at any level with the forces – the middle and upper classes – arrayed against him. But Abner is meant to invoke even more: he gave others the "feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest lay with his" (493). The people "whose interest lay with his" are the other members of the working-class, the men who toil in the new capital-based economic system whose labor is often exploited to increase the wealth of the wealthy. Abner is meant to embody all the class fears and repressed desires of the lower-classes.
Still, while his working-class pride helps explain his negative feelings the rich, it is no excuse for his essentially vicious nature. His flaw is that he views life in terms of combat: it's us v. them – and the "them" is anyone who doesn't agree with him. Both his harshness and simplistic view of life is on display when he accosts Sarty about his conduct in the Harris case. After striking him in the head, he tells him "You got to learn to stick to your own blood or your ain't going to have any blood to stick to you. Do you think either of them, any man there this morning would?" (493). For Abner, the world is clearly arranged against him: there is no sense of objectivity. He feels that society continually buffets his family, and only the bulwark of his family – the united front with which they face the world – can keep it at bay. This antagonist world-view helps explain Abner's conduct. He firmly believes that the justice meted out by the legal system looks with askance on his kind and prefers his own brand of justice: kerosene. While he's right about the slant in the legal system towards the rich, his brutal, selfish nature makes him a poor poster child for worker's rights. Indeed, he is at fault in both the Harris case and in the disagreement over de Spain's rug, and should have accepted his punishment. But his narrow-minded view of society blinds him, causing him, wrongly, to confront the world with a simplistic moral relativism that reduces complex moral issues into a false dichotomy; in effect, he offers Sarty a Hobson's choice: either agree with whatever I say or do, or you'll renege your connection with the family.
Unlike his father, for Sarty, life and justice are agonizingly complex. His budding moral sense makes him view his father's actions not with pride but with shame. After he realizes that his father wants him to lie he thinks " And I will have to do it " (491). The inclusion of "have" in the sentence suggests that Sarty doesn't want to lie; it's not "And I will do it," it's something that he has to do, with the helping verb implying that it is against his, if you'll pardon the pun, will. For him, a lie, even if it's for the good of the family, is still a lie, and thus something to be avoided.
Sarty's gradual separation from his family and moral development is depicted in three key scenes which test his values: at the first trial, at the second trial, and towards the end of the story when his father sends him to get the oil. Interestingly, for each of these trials, Sarty cannot tell that he's fighting with his conscience: by portraying the boy's morality as unconscious, Faulkner's conveys the difficulty of his choices. His wavering allegiance to his family, and its unconscious nature is shown in the first paragraph as he observes the Justice of the Peace. His thinking, shown in italics, makes it clear that he is convincing himself that "his father's enemy" is also " mine " (490). Sarty attempts to place the family and the courts in the same confrontational relationship that his father employs. But the phrasing of the sentences illustrate Sarty's true sympathies. His repetition of the plural possessive " our " suggests that it is far from clear that the Justice of the peace is also his enemy. The repetition is a persuasive tic that he uses to convince himself of the phrase's veracity. This is subtly revealed when he says " ourn! Mine and hisn both! He's my father! " (490). He moves from the plural, "ourn," to the singular, "Mine," as if to remind himself that they are connected, as if the act of making the connection in his head will make it more real. The last phrase, " He's my father, " seems to act as a mnemonic device, a way for him to find comfort in his lie by remembering the reasoning behind it. Of course his father, a man long used to closely observing others to ascertain his chances of taking advantage of them, sees right through Sarty, and his harsh treatment of him is meant to illustrate the distance between the two characters.
Yet the poignancy of the first courthouse scene – Sarty does not seem to understand why his conscience is working against his father – also illustrates the difficulties Sarty faces. When Abner strikes Sarty, "hard but without heat," he is attempting to bring him back to his senses: "You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood" (493). Unfortunately for Abner, Sarty's sensibilities lie not in blood ties, but in a more objective and moral view of justice.
In the second trial scene, Sarty is able to speak the truth, but unfortunately, it doesn't help his father. When he exclaims "He ain't done it! He ain't burnt . . . " (499), his attempt at exoneration is met with indifference and his family (Abner) literally casts him aside. Many critics argue that this action gives Sarty the necessary degree of separation to make his break with his family. I'm not so sure – his father merely tells him to go back to the wagon and he later speaks to him in a voice "almost pleasant, almost gentle" (500). It seems to me that Sarty has been struggling with his conscience from the opening paragraph, and his progression towards renunciation of his family is slow and sustained. In fact, it seems not so much his father's actions that lead him to make the final break with his family, but his earlier identification with de Spain and the values he represents.
When he first spies the de Spain mansion, he "forget[s] his father and the terror and despair both" (494). Here, his paternal claims are rendered null and void, and even the fear ("terror and despair") his father instills withers away. Confronted with this symbol of permanence and nobility, he "forget[s]" his family and his identification with society's values – and separation from his family – begins apace. For Sarty, the de Spain mansion stands for justice: " Hit's as big as a courthouse " he thinks "with a surge of peace" (494). "Courthouse" and "peace" are the key words here. Instead of the violence and chaos he's known all his life, the mansion represents the rule of law (courthouse) and stability (peace). As Sarty reasons, " They are safe from him. People whose lives are a part of this peace and dignity are beyond his touch " (494). His father's violation of this "peace and dignity" – apparently something Sarty valued highly – is the basis for his final act of renunciation. He decides to side, not with the blood of his family, but with the mores and values of society.
But Faulkner makes it a bit difficult for the reader to identify fully with Sarty. While his actions – standing up for what he feels is right – make him a kind of hero, just what is it that he's standing up for? When Abner accuses Major de Spain of wanting some "white sweat" (496), is he that wrong? Notice the condition of his tenant's house, "a paintless two-room house," versus the grandeur of the mansion. And remember that de Spain did indeed, as Abner suggests, acquire his wealth through slavery. Thus just what is it that Sarty is upholding? The right for the rich to oppress the poor? I think Faulkner tries, as other writers have in stories such as "A&P" and "A Very Old Man," to get the readers to question the actions of the characters and realize that the choices they – and by extension, we – make are seldom clear; what at first seems like a clear definition – justice – is, in fact, rather blurry. Is it justice that Abner, even if he would renounce his life of crime and work at being the best sharecropper he could be, would probably never gain enough money to buy his own homestead, let alone accumulate enough riches to build a mansion like de Spain's? (look again at the comments of Otken in "Before Reading the stories" for more details on class tension). As O'Brien does with "truth" in "How to Tell a True War Story," Faulkner shows that seemingly concrete concepts, such as "justice," are fluid and malleable.
Sarty's final test decides his fate. When his father sends him to get the oil can, he can run away and not tell anyone (as he thinks " I could keep on, . . . I could run on and on and never look back, " [501]), but at this point in the story, conscience rules over blood, and he makes the choice that will cast him out of the family forever and send his brother and father to their graves. When he hands the oil to his father, he asks him to send de Spain a warning. Abner realizes at once that Sarty will try to warn de Spain, so he orders his mother to hold him (an odd move here? Why not tie him up? He knows that his wife cannot possibly hold him.), but his struggle with his mother – symbolically a struggle with his family – results in his freedom, both literally and figuratively. Blood may be thicker than water, but for Sarty it is no match for moral integrity.
While it seems a bit unclear at first if the shots we hear find their mark, with a bit of inference, it becomes apparent that Abner and Sarty's brother were shot. In the lines directly after he hears the shots, Sarty "stumbl[es] . . . over something" (502). Looking backward at the glare of the barn fire, he seems to see what tripped him and "sob[s], 'Father! Father!'" (502). There is also the shift in his feelings: no longer does Sarty think of "terror and fear" when thinking about his life and his father; he now feels "grief and despair" (503). Alive his father, with his implacable yet quiet rage, inspired fear; now that he is dead, Sarty feelings have shifted to mourning. In a typically adolescent outburst, yet one that is sadly ironic to readers, Sarty says with empty conviction, "He was brave!" (503) almost as if he was trying to convince himself of his father's honor. But the past tense "was" signals his demise, and the comments by the narrator that directly follow concerning Abner's service in the army undercut any tribute to his father's memory.
In the last paragraph, Sarty is alone and cold, left with nothing and no one to fall back on. Yet the tone is strangely upbeat. He realizes that "walking would cure" (503) most of his physical ills, and the connotations of "cure" imply a deeper healing, a sense that now that he has turned his back on his family, he is healed. Of course the significance of dawn, with its promise of rebirth, also suggests that the rejection of his family's values was for the better. The last line, "He did not look back," reveals Sarty's mindset. Even the cost of justice was high, he, at least at this time, has no regrets. He does not look back with guilt or longing at family; instead he faces the new day with a sense of, if not happiness, then resigned acceptance. Still, the cost of justice is high: I wonder, as Sarty ponders this incident over the years, will he still "not look back," or will he be haunted by what he has done?
Family values, at least in the context of this story, should not always be communicated to offspring. By casting the story in such stark terms, Faulkner raises some interesting questions in our ongoing war between family and societal values. And his infusion of class tensions cast doubt on supposedly immutable ideals like justice, complicating and lending an air of uncertainty to accepted wisdom. But isn't that what a good story should do? Shouldn't it raise questions and doubts in our minds? I think so, and here Faulkner does an excellent job of rendering a complex moral dilemma in fictional form, showing us that the choices we make in life are often fraught with ambiguity and difficulties.
"Everyday Use"
There is an obvious semantic misunderstanding here. For Dee, heritage is material, an object that can be held to part the shades of time and allow memories and meanings to be revealed; for her, something as simple as a churn handle can take on a talismanic meaning. For Mrs. Johnson and Maggie, heritage isn't handled, it's lived: the object isn't important because the memories, accessed "everyday," are on the surface, and do not need a physical presence to be invoked. The differences between these definitions are the basis of the conflict in this story, and the resolution reveals Walker's view that heritage needs to be a living, dynamic presence in life or it will fade away.
Essentially, this conflict is derived from the classic struggle between the heart and the head: between emotion and the intellect. Mrs. Johnson and Maggie base their view of heritage on emotion. To them, it resides deep inside a person, forming an intrinsic part of their being. It needs no object: as Maggie tells her mother at the climax of the story, "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts" (1561). To them, heritage is living and breathing; it's the tradition, stories, and values carried and kept alive through a love for the people who make up their family history. In contrast, Dee sees heritage from a more intellectual view: separated from the life on the farm, she can only understand her past by observing objects. To her, heritage is dead, something that must be hung up for aesthetic use, for further study. In a sense, Dee's past is a vast museum filled with artifacts from a – for her – vanished way of life that can only be reconstructed by objects. But transforming housewares into art destroys their connection to life. Like a butterfly collector who kills in order to preserve, she's only content when staring at a once "living" object.
This tension between the heart and head is also seen by the contrasting views of education. On the one hand is the everyday knowledge used on the farm: Mrs. Johnson "can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man" and has "knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall" (1556). As she herself notes, "I never had an education myself" (1557). On the other hand is the book knowledge Dee possesses. She has been to college, yet has not learned that heritage is not what you possess, but what you feel. Ironically, Dee, with all her education, is the one who doesn't "understand . . . . heritage" (1561).
Point of view is important in this story ("And when isn't it important Dr. Bordelon?" "I'm just bringing up a point . . . Jeez!"). Just as in "Barn Burning," the choice of narrator influences where our sympathies lie. If Dee was telling the story, we might hear of an anguished childhood, replete with the indignities of being trapped with ignorant, shallow people who do not understand the ways of the world. But since it is told by Mrs. Johnson, the light cast on Dee is far from flattering. Even before we see her, we form a negative opinion of her character through Mrs. Johnson's descriptions of her person and actions. Dee's selfishness – and a negative view of book learning – is illustrated by the short anecdote discussing the way she read to her family. The adjectives and verbs in the passage – "without pity," "forcing," "burned," "shove," "dimwits" (1557) – reveal Dee's view of her family. Disdaining them, she strives to distance herself by placing herself above them intellectually. Her feelings about her family are displayed in the letter she writes to Mrs. Johnson where she cautions that "she will never bring her friends" home (1557). Her embarrassment over her family leads inevitably to her view of heritage: instead of embracing the sweaty, ignorant (in her eyes) people, she embraces the more abstract, aesthetically pleasing objects – which would never humiliate her in front of her friends by taking a "dip of snuff" (1561).
Dee's identification with the Black Muslim movement and her political views also points to this separation from her family. Her labored pronunciation of the Muslim greeting, "Wa-su-zo-Tean-O" (1558), and her willingness to "go through the chitlins" (1559), even though they are against the dietary restrictions of her religion, suggest a transitory attachment to the movement. Choosing an afro-centric religion distances her from the religion of her family – and the religion ("church" [1556]) that "sen[t] her to Augusta to school" (1556). Her conversion amounts to a willful ignorance of her family's beliefs and the people who have helped her. In a similar fashion, her renunciation of her name because of political beliefs, "I couldn't bear . . . being named after the people who oppress me" (1558), is a willful disavowal of her family's heritage. As Mrs. Johnson relates, the taint of master and slave associated with the name has long worn off and been replaced with a vibrant tradition of names which connect the generations of the family "back beyond the Civil War" (1559). The name Dee, far from being a reminder of oppression, is a way of keeping in touch with ancestors by keeping the memories of others alive.
These negative traits of Dee add up to a character who readers are directed to dislike. Both her religion and politics are suspect in Walker's eyes because they deny the lived-in heritage of the past hundred years in favor of an abstract, artificial one. The Pan-African Movement, which Dee seems to be a participating in, faltered because it tried to encompass all of Africa and its scattered brethren into one entity. All tribal and familial traditions and customs and beliefs were supposed to be subsumed under a wide umbrella of generic African cultures. While a noble attempt, it fell apart because it failed to treat people and nations as individuals. Walker seems to suggest that local, familial ties are more important than a construct: it's more important to understand the history of your name than to be able to speak a language which has not been a part of your family for centuries.
In contrast to Dee stands Maggie. While uneducated, she exhibits an understanding of her heritage that dwarfs Dee's, a heritage based not on a distant and long removed culture, but on the local past of ancestry. Dee does not know who whittled the dasher, though she hazards an answer, and looks to her mother for correction; significantly, it is Maggie who provides the correct answer: "Aunt Dee's first husband whittled the dash . . . . His name was Henry, but they called him Stash" (1560). Maggie has the power of recall, and in the oral culture she inhabits, memory is the keeper of tradition. The detail of her memory "first husband . . . . they called him Stash," means that the Johnson's heritage will continue, and the stories associated with the names will survive. In a way, Dee reminds me of Leroy in "Shiloh," who sees history as "just names and dates" (1133). For Maggie, history is not only names, but the stories which give people life.
The quilt is a perfect symbol for such a memory. Its scraps of cloth are a tangible reminder of the presence of a person. There were parts of "Grandma Dee," Grandpa Jarrell" and even "one teeny faded blue piece . . . from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform" (1560). The quilt brings together the family in one pattern, and in a perfect metaphor, "stitches" them together, unites the generations in (if you'll pardon the Disneyish metaphor) one fabric of life. Additionally, as Mrs. Johnson notes, quilting is a communal activity: "They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames. . . " (1560). Literally and figuratively, a quilt draws a family together, providing a shared memory. You can be sure that as the Dees and Mrs. Johnson sewed the patches in place, they reminisced about the lives of the people whose clothes they were joining. But it is only a symbol of heritage, as Maggie makes clear. As I noted earlier, when she tells her mother "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts." Maggie rightly locates heritage in memory, and her "everyday use" of the quilts will ensure that it will not die out. Through this exchange, Walker argues that a family's heritage must be kept alive and not, literally in this case, hung up like a museum piece.
Maggie, with her "brain . . . like an elephant's" (1560), is the perfect repository for the Johnson family's heritage. Since Walker carefully includes the information that Maggie can quilt (1561), it's assumed that the quilts, far from being worn to "rags" (1561) as Dee says with disgust, will continue their role as a recorder of the Johnson history with additional pieces of cloth, perhaps a piece from Mrs. Johnson's overalls, joining the other patches, forming a genealogical tapestry that traces the family's heritage. If Dee were to acquire the quilt, the Johnson family would come to a halt: like a stuffed moosehead on a wall, it would only suggest what was, as opposed to being a more dynamic (living?) symbol of the Johnson family's living heritage.
Unlike "Barn Burning," in this story we see the importance of sticking to your family and following the family traditions. Of course, it's easier for a person to follow a tradition when it doesn't involve kerosene and matches, but the differing views of familial attachment portrayed in theses two stories reveal the emptiness and paucity of a phrase like "family values." As these stories make clear, different families have different values and it is not as easy as it seems to determine which values are worth saving. Like life itself, the tensions and dynamics inherent in any family do not lend themselves to politically manufactured platitudes; instead, they are more easily treated in fiction, where the conflicts can be teased out and resolved – or where the conflicts, as often happens in life, can remain.
© 2000 David Bordelon