The Importance of Literary Elements in Barn Burning Understanding literary elements such as patterns, reader/writer relationships, and character choice is critical to appreciating William Faulkner's Barn Burning. Some literary elements are small and almost inconsequential, while others are large and all-encompassing: the mother's broken watch, a small and seemingly insignificant object, is used so carefully, to maximum effect; the subtle, but more frequent, use of dialect words that contain darker and secondary meanings; the way blood is used throughout the story in many different ways, including several direct references in a familiar sense; how Faulkner chooses to write about poor, ordinary people (in fact to the extreme) and how this relates to the views of Worth and Aristotle; and finally, the relationship between reader and writer, Faulkner's choice of narrator and point of view, and how this works successfully. One of the formal choices used by Faulkner is the clock, a gift from Sarty's mother, which does not work. On a simple level, the watch represents the Snopes' poverty, being all that his parents could offer the newlyweds, and the only fictional object ever mentioned in the Snopes' possession. Most importantly, however, it doesn't work, symbolizing the breakdown of their relationship and her happiness. For maximum effect, Faulkner mentions his mother's unhappiness immediately after the clock: ...the clock inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which did not work, stopped at fourteen minutes past two of a dead and forgotten time. , which had been his mother's dowry. He was crying....(Faulkner 4)His unhappiness is justified in the story by his treatment of Abner... in the center of the paper... creates a more complex picture of ideals and virtues than would otherwise be believable in a child of ten years uneducated. By reading carefully and paying attention to details, I was able to get much more out of this story than I did on the first read. In short, this assignment has greatly deepened my understanding and appreciation of the more complex and subtle techniques Faulkner uses to communicate his ideas in the story. Works Cited Faulkner, William. Selected Short Stories by William Faulkner, The Modern Library, New York, 1993. Smith, James Harry; Parks, Edd Winfield. The Great Critics, WW Norton & Company, Inc., New York, ?.Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1993.Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th edition. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth, 1993.