The Significance of Family Meals in Faulkner’s Barn Burning, Shall Not Perish, and Two Soldiers :: Barn Burning Shall Not Perish Two Soldiers

The Significance of Family Meals in Faulkners Barn Burning, Shall not Perish, and Two SoldiersThe meal, and more specifically the concept of the family meal, has traditional connotations of comfort and togetherness. As shown in cardinal of Faulkners short stories in The Country, disruptions in the life of the family ar often reinforced in the plot of the story by disruptions in the meal. In Barn Burning, Abner enters the house at dusk and could timbre the coffee from the room where they would presently eat the polar food remain from the afternoon meal. (14) A warm meal would indicate fulfillment and cohesion within the family. The inclusion of the detail that the food was cold represents an inversion of these associations. The cold meal symbolizes the familys distaste with Abners actions. The memory of the dinner lingers with the family as they get ready for bed and appears linked with negative images of Where they had been were no long, water-cloudy scoriations resembling th e discontinuous course of a lilliputian moving machine. (15) In addition, the emphasis that this dinner was in fact a left-over meal symbolizes that the pattern of Abners evil behavior and its effects on his family will not change.In Shall Not Perish, Mother, Father, and the narrator receive news that Pete has died at war. Upon hearing the evil news, the family fed and milked an came back and ate the cold supper. (103) In this short story, the ingest of cold food represents the cold, harsh realities of death and mourning. The family has been left with a changeless void and the disruption in the family meal serves to further illustrate this point.The find in Two Soldiers is preparing to send her son Pete off to war. As Petes younger brother recalls, Maw was getting Pete ready to go. She washed and mended his garb and cooked him a shoe box of vittles. (85) The mothers desire to throw away sure Pete leaves with one last meal, shows her desire to still be up to(p) to nurture he r son. This desire is inherent in the same way that cartel is.