Preview

Historical Context of Barn Burning

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
670 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Historical Context of Barn Burning
William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” takes a lot of real life cultural values and ways of southern life in the late 1800s. Many of those values and ways are expressed by sharecropping and tenant farming. Sharecropping and tenant farming began during the end of the Civil war all through the great depression. Sharecropping is an agreement between a tenant and a landlord in which a tenant farmer is allowed to work and live on a piece of land for free, but in exchange for living there for free, they give the landlord a share of the crop they grow. Sharecropping was mainly big in the southern states where slavery was once legal. The pay for being a tenant farmer was very low and the living itself was not very desirable. In Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” Abner Snopes is a white tenant farmer. He has this attitude that he should be given everything and should not be working as a sharecropper because he is white. At this time in history, many sharecroppers were freed slaves. Snopes believed that because he was white, he shouldn’t be a sharecropper. Like many sharecropper at this time, Snopes had plenty debts that needed to paid off. Instead of paying off his debts, Snopes decide to burn down his landowner’s barns. This leads Snopes and his family to move from county to county. This was a very common life for sharecroppers at this time. The life of a sharecropper was full of debts, and trying to make enough money to pay off those debts and make enough money for a living. Upon leaving his sharecropping job, Snopes finds a job at the household of Major De Spain. When they arrive, Snopes dirties a white rug and sneers at the black servant when the servant told him not step on it. Sometime after this, the servant comes to the Snopes’ new home and instructs Abner to clean the rug. During this time, servants and housekeepers were treated with more respect than sharecroppers were. Abner Snopes was appalled by this because he believed that because he was a white man, he


Cited: Channel , History . "Sharecropping & "Forty Acres and a Mule" — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts." History.com — History Made Every Day — American & World History. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. <http://www.history.com/topics/sharecropping>. Gardener , Ron . "New Georgia Encyclopedia: Sharecropping." New Georgia Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. <http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3590>. Giessen , James C. . "New Georgia Encyclopedia: Sharecropping." New Georgia Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. <http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3590>.
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Sharecrop Contract
    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Sharecrop Contract

    Sharecrop Contracts of the 1882 was a contract that seemed to be for the landowners and not for the actual sharecropper. The landowners seem to not really take care of the sharecroppers in any way. The landowner’s responsibilities seem to only be to supply the land or more like renting it and reaping the profits of the share croppers in order to keep them in debt to the landowners and never actually freeing them to own their own land and freedom actually keeping them not, as slaves, but still getting the benefits of slavery. The landowners agreed to supply 30 to 35 acres and furnish them, or basically rent them, a team of horses, a plow, and farming implements. Landowners insisted that the sharecroppers give them half of their crops no questions ask or at least make up for half of the fodder even if the sharecroppers crops failed for any reason. The sharecroppers wasn’t even supposed to be concerned with where the seed to the cotton or corn went or even know how much product they produced, the Landowner kept it housed and took it to the market and sold it and the sharecropper had to just trust that they was being honest in giving them what was left after the Landowner took out all the expenses and deductions. The landowners also made it where the sharecroppers could not plant any produce at their place of living if so the Landowner received a portion of it.…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Abner Snopes In Barn Burning
    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Abner Snopes In Barn Burning

    Abner Snopes is a guy that always causes trouble for his employers. In William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”, Abner Scopes, after being exiled by the Justice of Peace, goes to his new employer, de Spain, only then to dirty up his rug on the first day. After de Spain gives him the rug to clean, Abner damages it with lye and then sues de Spain when he tells Abner that he has to pay in twenty bushels of corn. The Justice of Peace rules that Abner should instead pay for ten bushel of corn in light of the evidence and his circumstances. The Justice’s ruling is fair due to Abner intentionally damaging the rug because of his disdain for the de Spains and their riches.…

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Sharecroppers: Reconstruction Era of the United States and Field Hands
    • 1322 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Sharecroppers: Reconstruction Era of the United States and Field Hands

    After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a "response to the destitution and disorganized" agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had "no entitlement to the land that he cultivated," and was forced "to work under any conditions" that his landowner enforced (Wilson 798). Many landowners viewed sharecropping as a way to elude the now barred possession of slaves while still maintaining field hands for labor in an inexpensive and ample manner. The landowners watched over the sharecroppers and their every move diligently, with harsh supervision, and pressed the sharecroppers to their limits, both mentally and physically. Not only were the sharecroppers just given an average of one-fourth of their harvest, they had "one of the most inadequate incomes in the United States, rarely surpassing more than a few hundred dollars" annually (Wilson 30). Under such trying conditions, it is not hard to see why the sharecroppers struggled to maintain a healthy and happy life, if that could even be achieved. Due to substandard conditions concerning sharecropper's clothing, insufficient food supplies, and hazardous health issues, sharecroppers competed on the daily basis to stay alive on what little their landowners had to offer them.…

    • 1322 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Art Summary: My Trip To Texas Southern
    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Art Summary: My Trip To Texas Southern

    Our trip to Texas Southern was overall very interesting. We briefly visited with Dr. Thomas Freeman and learned about his long, incredible life, but before that, we walked some of the halls containing mural after mural. Many are elaborate paintings of various elements of the black lives matter movement. Others, like the police brutality mural, have connotations to today’s world and the injustices African American people face on a day to day basis. The mural that caught my eye, though, was the one depicting one mule on a vast stretch of land which, Mr. Ford said, is a symbol of the ‘one mule and forty acres’ the enslaved families were meant to receive after being emancipated. Even though the painting may seem bare, the history of the origin of “forty acres and a mule” is displayed by what is included and excluded because, the mural’s location on an otherwise bare portion of wall represents the hope from an otherwise hopeless position, the mural itself represents the metaphorical promise of forty acres and a mule, and the bareness of the tree and…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Communication Studies
    • 1440 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Communication Studies

    The planters also tried to maximize the efficiency and profitability of their plantation by laying out the plantation in a specific way. Usually the plantation would be divided into three sections, where each section was separated and used for different purposes. One third of this land in the sugar plantation was used for sugar production. Sugar was not an exhausting crop so the land could be used for a long period of time. Another third of the land was used for planting food crops such as plantains, cassava, yams and fruit. The final third of the plantation was used for the woodland and were used for some slave huts. The woodland was used to provide timber for the buildings and firewood for furnaces. The slaves lived in a village which was separate from the other plantation because the whites did not want to be constantly reminded of hoe unpleasant slaves were. Their ‘village’ consisted of slave huts which were made by the slaves themselves using timber or mud-and-wattle. The slaves were required to have provision ground of their own where they can plant food crops and make money from selling them at the market. The provision grounds were not located next to the huts but were placed in the less fertile parts of the plantation. By laying out the plantation in this way, the planters managed the efficiency and by extension the profitability of their plantation.…

    • 1440 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Agriculture Income
    • 2037 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Agriculture Income

    (b). any income derived from such land by agricultural or by the process employed to render the produce fit for market or by sale of such produce by a cultivator or receiver of rent-in-kind;…

    • 2037 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    food wastage
    • 302 Words
    • 2 Pages

    food wastage

    ii. The rush to buy or enter long-term leases on land has been fueled in part by the low levels of world grain stocks, despite record harvests this year, and by a growing sense that world markets cannot be trusted to supply adequate grain. (Goering, 2008)…

    • 302 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Economy of Affection Cameroon
    • 6149 Words
    • 21 Pages

    Economy of Affection Cameroon

    Economy: Analyzing the Antebellum Plantation in its World Economy Context", in Rural Sociology, 52 (Summer): 242-263.…

    • 6149 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Land We Share Private Property And The Common Good Book Analysis
    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Land We Share Private Property And The Common Good Book Analysis

    When I read the title of this book, it made me think of all the thing happening in our society and how farmers and land owners deal with those changes. Growing up on a farm in North Central Illinois, I learned to understand just because my parents own the land doesn’t mean they can do whatever they wish on it. I learned the rules they must follow, from regulations and farming practices to natural resource issues. The government, neighbors, and even companies regulate what they can and can’t do. Whether that means that they can’t build a house on the west side of the road because a gas pipeline, that hasn’t been in use in 30 years, sits there, or they have to plant trees and natural grasses within so many yards of a creek. Even to what kind of chemicals and fertilizers can be used because of creeks and surrounding neighbors’ fields.…

    • 1029 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Sharecropping Case Study
    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Sharecropping Case Study

    But according to our opinion, this issue can be resolved if the landlord convey to the farmer that he is only concerned with the adequate output that should be produce and in the urge of attaining this objective the fertility of the land should not be damaged extensively. This will save the cost of supervision for the landlord and it will also reduce the change of work avoidance and using of low quality of seeds by the tenant to the great extent. On the other hand each party should know their managerial responsibilities i.e. monitoring activities involved in the sharecropping. Hence the monitoring of primary activities that has already been acknowledged by Aziz & Ismail (2008) includes the sowing and cultivation etc. will fall upon the tenant whereas the monitoring of secondary activities such as harvesting and transportation will be the joint responsibility of both the parties. It should also be known to the landlord that the role of tenant is like a trustee; hence he is not responsible for any damage caused to the crops except in case of the negligence form the tenant side. Regarding the power of landlord, it should be acknowledged that he has the authority to force the farmer in case he is delaying or avoiding doing certain works that has already been mentioned in the…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    : Analysis on the Budget Practiced by the Malaysian Government and the Effect Forward National Economic.
    • 6505 Words
    • 27 Pages

    : Analysis on the Budget Practiced by the Malaysian Government and the Effect Forward National Economic.

    James S., Herbert D. W. (1968), PPBS: A Management Innovation, Journal of Cooperative Extension: Winter pg 223. Retrieved from http://www.joe.org/joe/1968winter/1968-4-a4.pdf)…

    • 6505 Words
    • 27 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Diversification of Agriculture

    • 1480 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Diversification of Agriculture

    Woodville K Marshall wrote, "our pesantry starts in 1838 an comprises of ex-slaves who started small farms on the peripheries of plantation wherever they could find land - on abandon plantations and in the mountainous unknowns of various teritories." the first aim of the ex-slaves was to move away from the forced and unpaid labour. Many others preffered to stay in their own homes amongs friends and relatives with expectations of earning enough cash to purchase certain commodoties that they were unable to gain as slaves. The feeling of complete freedom, of the plantation was only recodnise by free people if they could aquire there own lands. the simplest methods of getting propperty was to buy unoccupied land, either from land belonging to plantations…

    • 1480 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    To Kill a Mockingbird
    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages

    To Kill a Mockingbird

    During the south in the 1930s, life was horrible. It was time of the Great Depression where countries like the United States were hit hard. It was a severe worldwide economic depression leading to World War II. It originated from a dramatic fall in stock prices in the US with a major stock market crash. The Great Depression had devastating effects to many peoples’ lives both rich and poor in the US, especially in the South. Because of the great economic can decline, many people lost their jobs. Farming and other rural areas also suffered as crop prices fell. Life was very hard during the 1930s. Since many people didn’t have jobs, it was hard to survive and buy food to feed the family. Poverty was a big problem in the US especially during the Great Depression. In the book “To Kill A Mockingbird”, it was a story that happened during the 1930s that tells us how peoples were very poor and how hard it was for them to survive. For example in Chapter 1 of the book, Scout being the narrator explains how her town Maycomb was a tired old town, where nothing happened much. She quoted: “People were moving slowly then, there was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with…” This explains how people had nowhere to go and had hardly any money at all to buy stuff they liked. Another example was in 17 where Scout as narrator talks about the Ewell’s live as a example of poverty. She says: “Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin…” This quote tells us how poor they were that the Ewells had to live behind the town’s garbage dump because they could afford a house to live in. It is very sad to see how people struggled to survive in the South during the 1930s. Another example from the text was when they talked about the Cunninghams. The Cunninghams were so poor that they couldn’t afford shoes for their children, so they had to walk barefoot everyday.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Negotiation For Fertilizer
    • 5885 Words
    • 26 Pages

    Negotiation For Fertilizer

    Jackson, A. (2008, November). One Acre Fund Summer Intern 2008. (K. Nelson and N. Tilzer,…

    • 5885 Words
    • 26 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Food Wastage
    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Food Wastage

    ii. The rush to buy or enter long-term leases on land has been fueled in part by the low levels of world grain stocks, despite record harvests this year, and by a growing sense that world markets cannot be trusted to supply adequate grain. (Goering, 2008)…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More