"Barn Burning" by Faulkner: Element of Fire
- Date: November 19, 2002
- Level: College, Undergraduate
- Grade: Unspecified
- Length: 5 pages (1328 words)
- Essay rating:
- Keywords:
abner snopes, story barn, barns, faulkner, short story, fires, ...revenge, element, evil symbol, central symbol, psychological conflict, destructive force, man who worked, bitter man, sharecropper, economic system, protagonist, nighttime, socio economic, longing
Hide extra keywords
Subject > Humanities Essays > Language Studies
The element of fire is a very powerful and destructive force to those who encounter it. It is often interpreted as an evil symbol as fires tend to be violent and uncontrollable towards anything in its path. This strong, devastating element of fire can also be used as a central symbol to describe a psychological conflict within one's mind or the problem with interacting with others. In Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" and Barreca's poem "Nighttime Fires," the fire is used as a symbol to represent the revenge, and anger towards the world felt by the fathers, who in turn, trigger a response in their children.
In the short story "Barn Burning" by Faulkner, Abner Snopes was the ...
... did not feel much love from her father, as he "never held" her. The only time he did was to point out the joy and excitement of "falling cinders" and the "swollen collapse of a staircase." The fires allowed her father to somewhat connect with her resulting in the longing for "burnt wood and a smell of flames high into the pines." She saw her father watch the fires until "nothing else could burn." This represents her understanding of what the fires meant to her father while she saw "his quiet face in the rearview mirror, eyes like hallways filled with smoke." The only times she saw happiness in
essay continues for another 100 words
