Why did Darl Bundren burn down the barn in 'As I Lay Dying?

Answer 1

Because this book hardly ever says things straight out (it never plainly says Dewey Dell is pregnant, or that Jewel sold his horse), it is basically left up to us to figure out, by using the information we have, Darl's motives behind burning down the barn. In Vardaman's section right before the barn burns, Darl and Vardaman are "listening" to Addie inside her coffin. Vardaman asks Darl what she's saying, he says that she's asking God to help her. When Vardaman inquires as to what help she wants, Darl replies, "She wants Him to hide her away from the sight of man... so she can lay down her life." Immediately following this, the barn is found burning. It's fairly obvious, once we gather these pieces together, that Darl's main goal was to burn the coffin in order to finally put his mother's physical existence to an end.

Further evidence we have that his goal wasn't just to burn the barn for the sake of burning it is that he helped Jewel take the animals outside of the burning barn. It wasn't until Jewel ran back inside after the coffin that Darl yells to "Stop him!" Darl does not want the coffin to be saved. After the whole incident, Vardaman sees Darl lying over the coffin, crying. From all this, we can gather that the whole reason he burned the barn was to burn the coffin.

If you recall, throughout the entire novel, he was the one who always wanted to go the shorter route. He wanted to go to New Hope, he didn't rescue the coffin from the fire. He thought that going through the county with a rotted corpse was humiliating; when Anse was going on and on to a city official in a town they stopped on, Darl told Anse to shut up. When Jewel gets upset with a man he thinks insulted his mother, Darl is the one who gets Jewel to apologize and step back. Through this, we can tell that he is actually quite caring of what people think of him and he is embarrassed by things people do. A way to stop this humiliating journey is to put the coffin to rest. He also realizes that Addie is a selfish, mean woman who doesn't care about any of her kids but Jewel, and that it's because of her that the family is so dysfunctional. He probably realizes that the only reason she told them to leave her body in Jefferson was to have them go through the journey. So he wants to burn her coffin before then and put her to an end.

Continuing on, another reason why he could possibly have wanted to burn the coffin is because, being the perceptive Darl he is, he might have figured out that the only reason Anse wants to go to Jackson is to get some new teeth. Anse's selfishness ends up causing Cash to possibly have to lose his leg and his hard-earned money to by a graphophone, Jewel to sell his horse, and the whole team of mules drowned. Darl realizes the pointlessness of the journey, the sacrifices, and Anse's selfishness. Because of this, he decides to burn the coffin with the hope of being able to stop sacrifices from being made for a pointless goal. She's dead, and there's no use in giving up so much to bury her in some specific place. Ironically enough, because he burns the barn with the hope of being able to stop sacrifices being made, he ends up in an mental institution, the worst fate of all the members of the Bundren family.

While the reason could be one or the other, most likely it's a mixture of both of those answers. Now, why he had to burn the whole entire barn to burn one coffin is hard to say. However, after considering all the possibilities, it is most likely that he burned the entire barn as a cover-up so nobody would know that it was Darl who burned the coffin. They all would have thought the coffin burned in an accidental fire.

This is the most likely reason as to why he burned the barn. Darl is a very smart, intelligent person and views things much differently than other people. To him, it was more important that the coffin burn than for the barn to be saved. Therefore, he burned down the whole barn with the coffin inside, thinking it would burn in the midst of the fire. He also could have left the animals inside there on purpose, knowing that Jewel would go in there to save the animals. His thought could have been that by the time Jewel had rescued the animals, he wouldn't have time to rescue the coffin.

There's a lot of deeper thinking to go on in this section, and again, nothing is completely certain, but given the information we have in the book, these are very likely reasons why Darl burned down Gillespie's barn.

Answer 2

Darl Bundren burned down the barn in "As I Lay Dying" as a way to cope with the stress and chaos surrounding his family's journey to bury their deceased mother, Addie. His action can be seen as a symbolic expression of his internal turmoil and a way to rebel against the absurdity and hardships they are facing.