“The Dead” and “Barn Burning”
“The Dead” by James Joyce tells the story of Gabriel who is usually a favourite with family and friends alike. This evening, however, due to unfortunate circumstances he finds himself out of favour first with Lily, the housemaid when he delves into her love life when she snaps back at him. He gets into further trouble when a past colleague of his suggests that he is not being patriotic when he refuses to take a holiday in Ireland and opts to go cycling on the Continent instead. Gabriel manages to make himself useful later on during the evening and delivers a speech wherein he states that life is to be lived and we should not dwell on death and the past. He is later surprised to find his wife Gretta mesmerized by a song that one of the guests is singing in the drawing room. At the end of the evening we find Gabriel as a completely different character to the one that he had started out to be. He started out being the helpful and favourite nephew to a persons who is some of the guests.
Finally, annoyed at his wife’s change of mood, (she is remembering a long lost love who is now dead) he thinks about his own mortality and about his wife’s dead ex-lover lying in a graveyard in the snow in Ireland. The character of Gabriel has completely changed from a joyful one who looks to the future and enjoys the moment to one who is now brooding and contemplating death and the past. There is an element of the autobiographical in this novel which is also permeated with several colourful anecdotes that recall Joyce’s intrinsic past and the emotions which he felt when faced with that past.
In Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning”, Sarty (Colonel Sartois Snopes), a ten-year-old boy is forced to lie in court to protect his father and his family. Although he was aware that his father was wrong, he was bullied by him to stand up for his family. He is torn between loyalty to his family and justice and morality. Knowing that he had done wrong by lying for his father’s sake, Sarty seeks to right some of the wrong by warning yet another of his father’s victims that his barn is about to be burned down by running to their house and yelling ‘Barn!’. This is enough warning for the owner and he seeks out Sarty’s father and fatally shoots him. Such conflicts are inevitable in the life of a Christian as long as the Christian practices his religion and has a conscience. Mainly, these type of conflicts are inevitable to anyone who has a conscience whether he is Christian or not. Being aware of what is right and what is wrong does not necessarily make one a Christian. As long as a person is decent and has an appropriate perception of right and wrong, then he should let his instinct tell him what to do. Unfortunately, in the case of Sarty, although the boy knew his own mind and that what he was doing was wrong, he was only a defenceless ten-year-old boy who was bullied by his father.
Undoubtedly the dilemma faced by the Christian is part and parcel of William Faulkner’s short story which deals with various real life situations that can happen to us every day.
References:
Faulkner, William. “Barn Burning.” Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner. New York: The Modern Library, 1993. 1-25. 1962.
Bloom, Harold. James Joyce's Dubliners. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
