Speech Mistakes In William Faulkner's Barn Burning

In “Faulkner’s Barn Burning,” Hal McDonald finds faults in the representation of Southern dialect used by William Faulkner. Although McDonald’s critique focuses on the speech mistakes in “Barn Burning,” he acknowledges Faulkner’s reputation for having accurate portrayals of ethnic and socioeconomic groups that connects his readers to the subject he is writing about.
McDonald uses the history of English dialect in the 15th century to back up his claim that Faulkner does not accurately depict a southern voice in “Barn Burning.” The issue of dropping or keeping the H in a word is supported and refuted depending on the situation. In Faulkner’s case, he uses this to depict a redneck hillbilly sense of lifestyle in characters such as Sarty and Ab
Snopes. McDonald is pointing out the inaccuracy in the attempt to claim them as hillbilly when what he has written is not something they would truly ever say. McDonald is not writing to tear down or criticize the substance or anything else for that matter in Faulkner’s writings; he is writing to point out the minor mistake he has made in the assumption that he uses to depict his characters a certain way.