Barn Burning by William Faulkner

Introduction

"Barn Burning" was born in the intense activity of William Faulkner's most brilliant decade. “Absalom, Absalom!” behind him, he gave increasing thought to the Snopes family, poor whites with stories worth telling as he had already intimated in As I Lay Dying when Anse Bundren, his mules having drowned, is forced to buy a team from Flem Snopes (Volpe, pp. 63). For writers in the 1930's, stories about the poor were seemingly mandatory, but Faulkner presented his characters from a much larger perspective than did most fiction writers of the time. He placed them in a context ...