Barn Burning By William Faulkner- Reflections On Classroom Discussion

The thoughts and questions that "popped" into my head while reading this story were very different from the statements and questions in class. I discovered through our group discussion that in fact the " barn burner" was a Caucasian man. My first instinct was that he was African-American because the woman who's barn burned down kept shouting the n-word at him (or at least I thought it was him.)" He was a strange nigger, I tell you. I don't know what became of him." (Faulkner 1) What also changed my perspective of the story was that a white family was poor! This is post Civil War era and from the previous pieces of literature I have read, one would suspect that every Caucasian family is filthy rich.

From my prospective I was rugged on the father's attitude towards his family."Do like I told you." ( Faulkner 10) The father treated them with as little of respect as an African-American from the year eighteen-sixty two. The little boy is terrified of his father throughout the story even though that is his own flesh and blood. If Colonel( the little boy) even makes it to his adulthood he will be terrified and traumatized as Shannelle pointed out reliving all those years of physical and emotional abuse. The father never treated anyone else in the family like this , just Colonel.

This short story is ironic because throughout the story the boy was loyal to his Father as Mr.Mcnamar stated but just at the very end he decides to break the trust and tells the Justice that his father is in fact the barn burner. "The boy said nothing to the Justice." (Faulkner 1)This made question "well why" then I answered my own question: Colonel broke the trust to get back at his father for all those harsh years of abuse, or he probably wasn't fond of the idea of lying.