How does Abner Snopes in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" view the world around him and his place in it? What motivates his rebellious actions to...

Abner Snopes of William Faulkner’s short story ‘Barn Burning’ is a despicable character who views the world through a lens of violence and cruelty, and he lives solely to mete out vengeance on any whom he perceives has slighted him. He views himself always as a victim rather than a criminal. He has no loyalty except to himself, he has no love for anyone, not even himself, and his distorted view of the world eventually destroys him.

‘Barn Burning’ opens in a store that doubles as a courtroom where Snopes is on trial for burning Mr. Harris’s barn. Mr. Harris tells the judge that Snopes’s pig got out of its pen and into his cornfield. He caught and returned the pig. When the pig got out again, Mr. Harris again returned the pig to Snopes along with a spool of wire for fixing the pen out of which the pig keeps escaping. He also tells the judge he warned Snopes that if the pig escaped again, he was going to keep it. The pig does, Mr. Harris pens it up, rides to Snopes’s place and tells him he has his pig and is charging him a ‘dollar pound fee’ to get it back (Faulkner, 1939, p. 1). While there, Mr. Harris notices ‘the wire [he] gave him still rolled on to the spool in his yard’ (p. 1). That evening a ‘nigger’ comes with the dollar, takes the pig, and leaves Mr. Harris with a message from Snopes: that ‘wood and hay kin burn’ (p. 1). That same night, Mr. Harris’s barn burns down.

What is most significant in this opening scene is that we can see Snopes’s view of himself as a victim rather than a criminal playing out. We learn that his neighbor fairly warns Snopes, not once but twice, to keep his pig properly penned and out of his corn. He even provides Snopes with the wire, without charge, necessary to repair and strengthen the pen. Snopes refuses to fix the pen, and when Mr. Harris follows through with his threat to keep the pig next time it ravaged his crop, Snopes, without remorse, seeks revenge rather than resolution and burns down Mr. Harris’s barn. When Snopes is told to leave the country, his response is ‘unprintable and vile, addressed to no one’ (Faulkner, 1939, p. 2). Rather than admitting his guilt and taking responsibility for both the pig and the barn, Snopes is a man totally unwilling to accept responsibility or admit culpability for the consequences that result from his actions. Why should he? He is the victim here, or so he thinks.

Snopes is a cold man, violent and cruel, a character without any real depth, and Faulkner (1939) repeatedly describes him in terms that reflect this: ‘[H]e could see his father against the stars but without face or depth—a shape black, flat, and bloodless as though cut from tin in the iron folds of the frockcoat which had not been made for him, the voice harsh like tin and without heat like tin’ (p. 3). Faulkner describes Snopes as being ‘flat,’ ‘without depth,’ ‘bloodless,’ ‘like tin,’ all terms that show us Snopes lacks human warmth. We see this play out in his interactions with his son Sarty, particularly when he believes Sarty was going to ‘betray’ his barn burning to the judge:

‘You were fixing to tell them. You would have told him.’ He didn't answer. His father struck him with the flat of his hand on the side of the head, hard but without heat, exactly as he had struck the two mules at the store, exactly as he would strike either of them with any stick in order to kill a horse fly, his voice still without heat or anger. (p. 3)

Snopes hits Sarty hard, but not any differently than he would hit a mule or kill a fly. There is no love for his son, no nurturing guidance, no emotion other than his disgust at the possibility of being betrayed. Faulkner (1939) also tells us that Snopes has a ‘wolflike independence’ (p. 3) and later compares him to a stinging wasp and a house fly (pp. 5,6). He also describes his hand as a ‘curled claw’ (p. 6) and the sound of his stiff foot as ‘a sort of vicious and ravening minimum’ (pp. 5-6). These animal-like characteristics further serve to dehumanize Snopes.

In the same scene in which Snopes hits Sarty, he tells him,

You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you. Do you think either of them, any man there this morning would? Don't you know all they wanted was a chance to get at me because they knew I had them beat? (p. 3)

There are two issues in evidence here, and both are deeply ironic. First, we see again Snopes’s victim mentality. He is unconcerned with and indeed perhaps ignorant of his own culpability for his pig or in burning Harris’s barn. He sees the trial as a personal attack on him, as an attempt to get even with him for 'beating' Harris even though he was the one who attacked Harris by burning his barn. Snopes views burning the barn as justified by the perceived slight against him. The second irony lies in his advice to Sarty to stick to his own blood because Snopes is a man who did not do that when he fought in the Civil War. Being a Southerner, Snopes should have fought for the Confederate side—or defected and fought for the Union—but we learn that Snopes spent ‘those four years in the woods hiding from all men, blue or gray, with his strings of horses (captured horses, he called them)’ (p. 3, emphasis mine). We learn that Snopes only fought as a mercenary, only fought when there was something in it for him personally. We also learn that his ‘captured horses’ are stolen horses, and his limp is a result of being shot in the foot while escaping on a stolen mount. So although Snopes advises his son to be loyal, Snopes himself has never been.

This victim mentality later plays out again when Snopes burns down Major de Spain's barn in revenge for having been found guilty of and fined for intentionally destroying de Spain's rug. Again, Snopes has no recognition that he is culpable for his actions, and he feels wholly justified in burning the barn as retribution for the slight against him.

As we see, then, Snopes's view of the world is one in which he is a victim, and he makes himself feel better about his lowly position in the world by burning the barns of those who 'make' him feel bad. His view of the world eventually, however, costs him his life when de Spain shoots him down while Snopes is trying to burn his barn.

How were the boys treated when they arrived in Hooverville? Why were they treated this way?

The boys were treated quite well when they entered Hooverville. The first group of men that they encountered were friendly toward Bud and Bugs. The men told the boys where they were, and then that Hooverville was loaded with men and women just like Bud and Bugs.

"All these people," the mouth organ man said, "are just like you, they're tired, hungry and a little bit nervous about tomorrow. This here is the right place for y'all to be 'cause we're all in the same boat. And you boys are nearer to home than you'll ever get."

The above quote explains why the men were so friendly to Bud and Bugs: everybody in Hooverville is "in the same boat." That means they are all in the same life situation. They are all struggling together, and as the saying goes, "misery loves company."

The men notice that Bud and Bugs look very hungry, so they are nice enough to steer the boys toward where they can get some food. The only catch is that Bud and Bugs have to pull kitchen duty. They can eat, but they have to do all of the dishes. The catch makes sense. Nobody has any money, but the food doesn't come free. Each person has to do a bit of work in order to be fed.

The mouth organ man said, "You’re welcome to join us, but we all pitch in here, so's unless either one of you is carrying one of them smoked West Virginny hams in them bags, it looks like you'll be pulling KP tonight."

I said, "Pulling what, sir?"

He said, "KP, Kitchen Police, you do the cleanup after everyone's had their fill. There're a couple of other young folks who'll show you what you have to do.”

Me and Bugs both said, "Yes, sir!" This seemed like a real good trade.

What is a lobotomy in psychopathology?

Introduction

The surgical procedure referred to as a lobotomy was initially proposed by physicians who believed that severe emotional and cognitive disturbances were caused by aberrant neural connections in the brain. It was hypothesized that destruction of this abnormal brain tissue could lead to clinical improvements for major psychiatric disturbances. The lobotomy was used, in part, because there were relatively few treatment alternatives to improve the condition of people who suffered from severe psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia.

Gottlieb Burckhardt, in 1890, is credited as being one of the first surgeons to perform a psychosurgery procedure on mental patients to address symptoms such as agitation and hallucinations. Others, such as Ludvig Puusepp, in 1910, began to operate more specifically on the frontal lobes of the brain to help a group of patients suffering from manic-depression psychosis. The results of the surgeries were mixed, and Puusepp, like Burckhardt, concluded that the dangerous procedure was not worth the risks to patients.

Years later, in 1935, Portuguese physician and neurologist António Egas Moniz, working with surgeon Pedro Almeida Lima, revived the psychosurgery debate by performing a prefrontal leukotomy. This type of lobotomy involved drilling holes on each side of the top of the head, near the frontal areas, and then inserting a leukotome, a needle that contains a small circular wire that can be deployed. Once the leukotome was in position, the wire was released and the instrument was twisted to cut the white matter of the brain, which contains primarily nerve connections from the frontal lobes to other areas of the brain. In 1949, Egas Moniz became the first physician from Portugal to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the development of the lobotomy.

Movement Away from Prefrontal Leukotomy

One year after Egas Moniz and Lima’s initial prefrontal leukotomy, American physician Walter Jackson Freeman II and surgeon James Watts began to modify the medical procedures. Freeman and Watts did away with the leukotome and started to drill holes on each side of the head, near the temples. A blunt spatula was then inserted and waved toward the top and back and toward the bottom of the head, effectively severing the neural connections between the frontal lobes and the thalamus. This procedure came to be known as the Freeman-Watts standard lobotomy. This procedure was believed to be more precise in its ability to selectively destroy connections between the frontal cortex and the thalamus and to produce better clinical results. However, Freeman still did not like the fact it was a time-consuming surgery that involved drilling into the cranium and required an operating room.

In 1946, Freeman began to popularize a new version of the lobotomy called the transorbital procedure. Although this procedure had its beginnings in Italy in the late 1930s, Freeman altered the way that brain tissue would be destroyed. Freeman’s procedure involved taking a sharp metal instrument (he first used an ice pick) and placing it under the patient’s eyelid. A mallet would then be used to tap the instrument until it broke through the thin bone behind the eye socket. The instrument was then inserted a couple of inches into the head and moved back and forth. Freeman perfected this procedure to the point that he could train another physician to complete it in ten minutes, without the use of a surgical room. This simple transorbital procedure made it possible for lobotomies to be performed on a far larger number of patients. Although Freeman himself performed about thirty-five hundred lobotomies during his career, it is believed that tens of thousands of lobotomies were performed worldwide.

Treatment Effectiveness

Of Egas Moniz’s first twenty patients, fourteen were reported to have recovered or to have substantially improved. The remaining six were believed to have shown some improvement in that they had had more severe symptoms (hallucinations and delusions) before the surgery. Egas Moniz was criticized because he followed his patients for only a few days after the surgery. One follow-up study that was conducted twelve years later revealed that the results were not as positive as initially reported.

Freeman reported that patients, with the exception of those who were suffering from chronic schizophrenia and a limited number of other types of psychosis, generally benefited from the procedure. Follow-up studies have found that it is difficult to determine who will benefit from a lobotomy and what kinds of detrimental effects the procedure will have on emotions and cognition. Also, proselytizers of the procedure overstated the positive outcomes. By the mid-1950s, the introduction of antipsychotic medication such as chlorpromazine (Thorazine) had begun to transform the lives of residential psychiatric patients to the point that lobotomies became seldom used.

Bibliography

Culliton, B. J. “Psychosurgery: National Commission Issues Surprisingly Favorable Report.” Science 194 (1976): 299–301. Print

El-Hai, Jack. The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness. Hoboken: Wiley, 2007. Print.

Finger, Stanley. Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations into Brain Function. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.

Johnson, Jenell. "Thinking with the Thalamus: Lobotomy and the Rhetoric of Emotional Impairment." Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 5.2 (2011): 185–200. Print.

Raz, Mical. "Interpreting Lobotomy—The Patients' Stories." Psychologist 27.1 (2014): 56–59. Print.

Raz, Mical. The Lobotomy Letters: The Making of American Psychosurgery. Rochester: U of Rochester P, 2013. Digital file.

Valenstein, Elliot S. Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness. New York: Basic, 1986. Print.

Valenstein, Elliot S., ed. The Psychosurgery Debate: Scientific, Legal, and Ethical Perspectives. San Francisco: Freeman, 1980. Print.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy shows that the boy could not survive without his father, but why did the father need the boy?

In the dehumanized, post-apocalyptic world of this novel, the father needs the boy, his son, for psychological reasons. Caring for and protecting the boy gives the father's life meaning and purpose, a reason to keep on living in a bleak, barren world filled with hunger, fear, violence, cannibalism, and hopelessness. Second, looking out for someone beyond himself, especially someone weaker and more vulnerable, helps keep the father human. The boy is someone the father can love, and with the boy, the father can create a community, tiny as that community of just two human beings is. While their bond may seem insignificant, it's vital, for this world has turned into one in which people are isolated, fighting and preying on each other for scanty bits of food. It is dangerous for the father to trust any other person than his son. Further, the father is dying, and having the son to protect gives him the motivation to stay alive for as long as possible.

In the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, how did Artemidorus know about the conspiracy?

In William Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar," Artemidorus likely knew about the plot to kill Julius Caesar through Brutus. Despite the suggestion of taking an oath (Act II, Scene I) to swear all the conspirators (Cassius, Brutus, Casca, Cinna, Trebonius, Metellus Cimber, Decius Brutus, and Caius Ligarius) into secrecy, Brutus is quick to dismiss the idea, stating: 

No, not an oath. If not the face of men,

The suffering of our souls, the waste of time–

Although it is not explicitly stated, it is speculated that due to Brutus' trusting nature and overall excitement about the plot, he is the likely culprit in disclosing the details of the conspiracy. 

Artemidorus writes Caesar a letter warning him to take heed and going as far as listing each of the conspirators by name. This detailed account could only be obtained if one of the conspirators directly informed Artemidorus. Caesar, however, dismisses the letter and the result is obviously tragic. 

In my opinion, the reason Brutus is the one likely to have told Artemidorus about the plot is based on his friendship with Caesar, and that perhaps on a subconscious level he was trying to warn him himself in the hope that Caesar would learn the truth before it was too late. This supports why Brutus was so quick to dismiss swearing an oath. 

What are xenotransplants?

History

The idea of xenotransplants is actually quite old. During the eighteenth century, for example, transfusions of sheep’s blood were believed to be therapeutic for certain human illnesses. As the science of organ transplants between humans progressed, researchers became increasingly interested in experimenting with using animals as donors. Organ transplantation is an accepted medical treatment in humans, but there are not enough donor organs from humans available to treat every patient who could benefit from the procedure. In 2013, more than 120,000 people in the United States were waiting for an organ, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. As the demand for transplant surgery grows, the pool of available donor organs shrinks in relation. One of the ethical dilemmas inherent in human organ transplant is that, in most cases, for one person to receive a transplant, another person must die. Bone marrow, partial liver, and kidney transplants are among the few exceptions; donors can usually donate bone marrow, a lobe of their liver, or one kidney and still survive. Nevertheless, for most organs the dilemma remains.

Researchers are interested in using organs harvested from compatible animals, eliminating both the need to wait for a compatible human donor and the shortage of usable organs. This is one form of xenotransplant, and it could eliminate the shortage of donor organs. However, researchers have encountered two major barriers to xenotransplantation; organ rejection by the human body’s immune system and the risk of xenosis, or the transmission of infectious agents, like viruses, between species.

Early research focused on potential donor animals that were similar to humans—that is, primates such as baboons and chimpanzees. Perhaps the most publicized example of such a xenotransplant was the 1984 Baby Fae case, in which doctors in California transplanted a baboon heart into a newborn human infant who otherwise had no chance for survival. The infant survived for several days before succumbing to complications. In 1993, a baboon liver was transplanted to a patient with liver failure. The patient lived for seventy days before dying of an infection. Researchers quickly learned that primates were not ideal candidates for organ donation; not only might the human body reject these organs, but primate organs are small in comparison to those of humans. Chimpanzee kidneys, for example, are too small to perform adequately in an adult human.

Researchers then turned their attention to pigs as possible donors. Swine make ideal donor candidates because they are physically large enough to have organs that can sustain humans, have a short gestation cycle, produce large litters of offspring, and, because they are routinely raised for meat production, are viewed as expendable by the general public. Pig heart valves are already routinely used in humans, with thousands implanted annually, and pig skin is often grafted onto burns. In a clinical trial, pig pancreas cells were injected into patients with Type I (juvenile) diabetes mellitus and several patients required less insulin afterward. People with liver failure have also been hooked up to pigs’ livers to keep them alive until a human liver was available for transplant.

In preliminary trials in humans conducted in the 1990s, neural crest cells (embryonic cells that eventually form part of the nervous system) from fetal pigs were injected into the brains of patients who had experienced a stroke or who had Parkinson’s disease. While a few patients had side effects that could have been the result of this treatment, some patients also seemed to get better. Later, another clinical trial was conducted in patients with Parkinson’s disease. In this trial, all patients underwent a surgical procedure, but only half of the eighteen patients in the study had pig cells injected into their brains, while the other half did not. Neither the patients nor the neurologists who evaluated the patients for improvement knew who had gotten the cell treatment. When the trial was complete, the results showed that there was no difference between patients who got the cells and those who did not, indicating that the pig cells did not improve Parkinson’s disease.

Despite the possible benefit of using pig cells to treat some human diseases, the use of larger organs from pigs has been less successful. Transplant recipients experienced hyperacute rejection; that is, their bodies immediately reacted to the foreign tissue by shutting off the flow of blood to it.

Transgenic Pigs

In 1992, researchers in the United Kingdom announced the creation of Astrid, the first transgenic pig. A transgenic animal is one who has been genetically modified with genes from another species. Since then, several groups have worked to create pigs with organs that have been genetically modified to be human compatible so that they are not rejected by the human immune system. Another goal of this kind of research is to create pigs with organs that are not susceptible to pig viruses.

Ethical and Medical Concerns

Xenotransplantation presents a number of ethical and medical dilemmas. The possibility that a virus, harmless to the donor animal, might be transmitted to the human host and then prove fatal is a major concern. Scientists worry that a potentially deadly disease epidemic could result from using organs or other tissue from either swine or primates. While many researchers are confident that careful screening of donor animals would eliminate or minimize such risks, critics remain convinced that it is possible a virus could lie dormant and undetected in animals, causing problems only after the transplants occurred. Baboons, for example, carry a virus that has the potential to cause cancer in humans.

In addition to the medical issues raised, many bioethicists question the morality of using animals as a source of “spare parts” for humans. They are particularly troubled by the idea of genetically altering a species such as swine in order to make their organs more compatible with human hosts. Proponents of xenotransplants counter these arguments by noting that humans have selectively bred animals for various purposes for thousands of years to eliminate certain characteristics while enhancing others. In addition, animals such as swine are already routinely slaughtered for human consumption.

Finally, there is the problem of human perceptions. While many people support the idea of xenotransplants on the genetic or cellular level, they are less enthusiastic about possible organ transplants. That is, while a majority of people surveyed said they would have no problem accepting a xenotransplant if it were part of gene therapy, far fewer were interested in possibly receiving a pig’s heart if the need arose. If researchers do achieve successful xenotransplants using such organs, however, public perceptions could change. It is easy to question a medical procedure when it is still theoretical; it becomes much more difficult to do so after it becomes a reality.

Impact

An immediate and plentiful source of organs from swine could improve and save many human lives. Overcoming the immunological problems and infectious disease risks are serious barriers to xenotransplantation, and remain active areas of research. Creating transgenic pigs with human-compatible organs is a main thrust of research in xenotransplantation. However, human stem cells from unused embryos or adult stem cells is a competing line of research that may offer an alternative source of organs for transplantation, or a means to repair diseased ones.

Key terms



hyperacute rejection

:

when a transplanted organ or tissue is immediately (within minutes) rejected by the body of the transplant recipient




neural crest cells

:

embryonic cells that eventually form part of the nervous system and other tissues





stem cells


:

multipotent cells that can differentiate into a diverse range of specialized cells




transgenic

:

involving the deliberate incorporation of foreign genes into an animal, such as human genes incorporated into the pig genome




xenosis

:

the transmission of infectious agents between species





Bibliography

Bassett, Pamela. Emerging Markets in Tissue Engineering: Angiogenesis, Soft and Hard Tissue Regeneration, Xenotransplant, Wound Healing, Biomaterials, and Cell Therapy. Southborough: D & MD Reports, 1999. Print.

Bloom, E. T., et al. “Xenotransplantation: The Potential and the Challenges.” Critical Care Nurse 19 (1999): 76–83. Print.

Boneva, R. S., and T. M. Folks. “Xenotransplantation and Risks of Zoonotic Infections.” Annals of Medicine 36 (2004): 504–17. Print.

Cowan, Peter J., et al. "Kidney Xenotransplantation." Kidney Intl. 85.2 (2014): 265–75. Print.

Cruz, J., et al. “Ethical Challenges of Xenotransplantation.” Transplant Proceedings 32 (2000): 2687. Print.

Daar, A. S. “Xenotransplants: Proceed with Caution.” Nature 5 March 1998: 11. Print.

Fishman, Jay A., et al. "Xenotransplantation-Associated Infectious Risk: A WHO Consultation." Xenotransplantation 19.2 (2012): 72–81. Print.

Ghebremariam, Y. T., et al. “Intervention Strategies and Agents Mediating the Prevention of Xenorejection.” Annals of the New York Academy of Science 1056 (2005): 123–43. Print.

Griesemer, Adam, et al. "Xenotransplantation: Immunological Hurdles and Progress Toward Tolerance." Immunological Reviews 258.1 (2014): 241–58. Print.

Hagelin, J. “Public Opinion Surveys About Xenotransplantation.” Xenotransplantation 11 (2004): 551–58. Print.

Inui, Akio. Epigenetic Risks of Cloning. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2006. Print.

Persson, M. D., et al. “Xenotransplantation Public Perceptions: Rather Cells than Organs.” Xenotransplantation 10 (2003): 72–79. Print.

“United States Decides Close Tabs Must Be Kept on Xenotransplants.” Nature 8 June 2000: 606–07. Print.

What kind of shelter did Brian make in Hatchet?

Brian makes a shelter up against a stone ridge. 

After the plane crashes, Brian realizes right away that he is going to need some kind of shelter.  His windbreaker is torn to shreds.  He is also at the whim of the wild animals.  Brian finds his priorities almost immediately. 

He had to have some kind of shelter. No, make that more: He had to have some kind of shelter and he had to have something to eat. (Ch. 5) 

Although Brian may be just a kid on his own, he does have some small measure of survival knowledge.  He remembers playing the park with his friend Terry and deciding that the best shelter in the wilderness would be a lean-to.  Brian decides that it is a good idea for him too. 

His eyes fell upon the stone ridge to his left and he thought at first he should build his shelter against the stone. But before that he decided to check out the far side of the ridge and that was where he got lucky. (Ch. 6) 

Brian uses the sun to determine that the far side of the ridge is the northern side.  The overhang makes an almost perfect roof for Brian.  It is the next best thing to finding an actual cave.  Brian is too weak to make proper walls, however.  Remembering a program about air force pilots taking wilderness survival training, Brian decides to look for berries. 

The gut-cherries were a bad idea, but the shelter works well.  Brian starts to think of it as home, and works to make it more comfortable and secure.  Little by little he gets strong enough to build on it. 

The brush made a fair wall, not weather tight but it cut most of the wind off. He hadn't done so badly at that. Maybe it wasn't much, but also maybe it was all he had for a home. (Ch. 7) 

Brian’s shelter is invaded by a porcupine, but generally makes him feel safe.  He decides to add a fire, and after some trial and error manages to get one going.  Brian is really surviving on his own.