Historical Context of Barn Burning Essay - 672 Words

William Faulkner’s â€Å"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†¦show more content†¦These types of arrangements were quite common at this time between sharecroppers and their landlords. The sharecroppers had little to no money, so the landlords would charge them for items, or take an extra percentage of their crops. The setting of this story is very important because it gives you a sense of what life was like back during the late 1800s. â€Å"Barn Burning† takes place in the south after the civil war. After the civil war, the south was in the period of reconstruction. A lot of the south was destroyed from the war, and it affected everyone in the south from their economy, to their personal lives. Many people lived impoverished like the Snopes family. Abner Snopes holds a lot of resentment because he couldn’t be successful in his life. Instead of changing his life and working hard, he resents everything and everyone around him. This attitude eventually leads to his downfall. William Faulkner’s â€Å"Barn Burning† takes a lot of real life situations and puts them into fiction. He is able to put the life around him in to stories of fiction. Works Cited Channel , History . Sharecropping amp; Forty Acres and a Mule — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts. History.com — History Made Every Day — American amp; World History. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2013. lt;http://www.history.com/topics/sharecroppinggt;. Gardener , Ron . New Georgia Encyclopedia: Sharecropping.Show MoreRelatedThe Truth Is Often A Great Lie1829 Words   |  8 PagesDoctorow tells a story that blurs fact and fiction masterfully, often suspending the readers’ ability to discern historical narrative and fictionalized tales. Ragtime follows the lives of two fictional families in the Progressive Era; their roles in the novel develop in relation to their frequent interactions with real historical figures, in addition to their attendance at historical events. Doctorow uses fictional characters as in order to provide a comprehensive commentary on the social and economicRead MoreSummary Of The Prologue Essay2169 Words   |  9 Pagesthat her children gained education. During the 1850’s, the historical context was that slavery was the main issue that occurred within the United States. 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