Symbol of Fire in Literature

In "Barn Burning," Colonel Sartoris Snopes must struggle between the truth and honor represented by his legendary namesake and the hatred and law-breaking nature of his father. William Faulkner uses the ambiguity and ambivalence of the Civil War as the background for this story about a young boy who wants to remain true to his "blood," but who knows that his blood will lead him astray. The story, however, is also about Abner Snopes' struggle to defy a world he sees as in opposition to himself. Faulkner does not explain why Abner feels such hatred and resentment toward the world, but it is not hard to imagine that he may resent those with more material possessions than himself because his life has always been so hard. Nonetheless, the duty falls on little Colonel Sartoris to break the blood ties that will make him like his father and instead open up a whole new world.

The apparent connection between Faulkner's "Barn Burning" and Jack London's "To Build a Fire" is the symbolism attributed to fire. In "Barn Burning," Abner Snopes uses fire as a means of terrorizing those he chooses. Colonel Sartoris wonders at his father's fascination with fire. However, while he is not able to determine his father's exact relationship with fire, Faulkner reveals it to us:

And older still, he might have divined the true reason: that the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father's being, as the element of steel

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. Thus, we know that we are unable to trust our narrator and so must determine precisely what is going on in the story on our own. The story is not representative of common experience because the murder of one's benefactor is generally not very socially acceptable. That, alone, however, is not the reason the story lacks commonality. Rather, the narrator's insanity and his reaction once he has killed the benefactor is what removes the story from the common experience. The narrator shows no sympathy or remorse for his actions: The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more (43). The reader is aware that the benefactor has probably done nothing to deserve his untimely end and, thus, identifies more with the murdered man than his murdered. We, then, are reading in opposition to the point-of-view most readily available to us. When the murderer reveals himself to the police at the end of the story, we are glad because we believe he should be punished for what he has done. In one significant way, Poe's story does reflect Johnson's note
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Kamo River, Tell-Tale Heart, Colonel Sartoris, Oedipus King, Build Fire, William Shakespeare, Cassio Wear, American Dream, King Oedipus', Arthur Miller, oedipus king, drama 5th ed, 5th ed york, harper collins publishers, ed york, introduction fiction, drama 5th, 5th ed, poetry drama, york harper, ed york harper, harper collins, collins publishers, publishers 1991, york harper collins,
Approximate Word count = 4333
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)