This afternoon, I had the glorious opportunity to open the book of selected short stories given to me weeks ago as required reading and blogging for my AP English III class. Unfortunately for myself, the first story I read happened to be a work by William Faulkner entitled "Barn Burning". Typically, I take some degree of erudite pleasure in reading antiquated literature with unusual styles of writing; in this case, however, I found the exact opposite to be true. After reading the very first page of "Barn Burning," I can truthfully say that I deplore both Faulkner and his literary style. In my opinion, his use of extremely long and vaguely descriptive sentences makes it nigh impossible for nary a modern reader to understand at all what he is trying to say. By extension, then, I fail to grasp the plot or underlying message of "Barn Burning" to any degree whatsoever. But from what I could divine I have this to say:
"Barn Burning" is a short story that takes place in the Confederate South during the Civil War. It opens during a Justice of the Peace trial; one Mr. Snopes is presumably on trial for allegedly setting fire to his neighbor's barn for a small dispute over a pig. The judge is unable to find Mr. Snopes guilty due to the lack of concrete evidence; however, Snopes elects to be ostracized from the Confederate South, with which he has some sort of bad blood. Afterwards, Snopes and his family flee their house and set up camp in a nearby clearing close to the house of one black sharecropper Mrs. de Spain. Snopes, in his racism and bad temperament, sullies and destroys the rug of Mrs. de Spain and is then subsequently confronted by the Justice of the Peace and fined twenty bushels of corn. Upon appealing his case in court, the fine is lowered to ten bushels; Snopes is still unhappy however and begins his plot for revenge. At the end of the story, he again gives into his lust for arson and burns down the house of Mrs. de Spain. Snopes' young son, Abner, who was revealed near the beginning of the story to have opposed his father's deadly pastime, then escapes from his family and warns the proper authorities of the blaze before leaving for good.
I can only see two major points of interest in this soporific short story. First, there is the physical conflict between Mr. Snopes and the residents of the South. Snopes, for some unexplained reason, has taken the habit of burning the property of his naysayers and trying to escape the law with impunity. In my opinion, this really isn't a deep or engaging plot element, especially due to the large strain Faulkner's words put on readers; even figuring out that a building is ablaze is feat of uncanny strength. And second, there is some sort of internal conflict in the mind of the son, Abner. Throughout the story, he views his father with a powerful mix of fear and dislike, an understandable assessment considering his numerous beatings at his father's hand. His escape from the fetters of his dysfunctional family can be seen to be both the climax and the resolution of the story in such a respect: he both flees the influence of his father to report him to the authorities and makes the conscious decision to deny that part of his life entirely. And as interesting a psychological element as it may be, it still doesn't lessen my dislike for the work as a whole. And so, I will change topic briefly and leave you all with something completely unrelated.
I think my new favorite non-vocabulary yet still vocabulary word is "strumpet." But not as in "I quaffed my daily tea whilst enjoying a healthy repast of strumpets." That sentence is wrong. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. I mean the strumpet as in: "I called my sister a strumpet after she refused to lend me her Yu-Gi-Oh cards to use in the upcoming tournament at the local nerd haunt." And on that note, I bid you all a fond farewell until I publish my next installment probably next morrow.
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