The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

The ambiguity inherent in the plot of “Barn Burning” has led to a variety of interpretations since its original publication. A common interpretation is that the boyfriend is a serial killer and that “barn burning” is a euphemism he uses for killing young women. When he tells the narrator that he is planning on burning a barn close to his home, the assumption is he’s referring to his girlfriend. This interpretation explains why the narrator cannot find any burned barns near his home despite the fact that he sees several that fit the boyfriend’s criteria. Also, the girlfriend disappears around the time the boyfriend claims he has burned a barn.

“Barn Burning” can also be interpreted as a metaphor for social relationships and the isolation experienced in their absence. The narrator develops a close friendship with the girlfriend for reasons that even he hardly understands. He finds that he can relax around her and that he is drawn to her disinterest in the material world (it is significant that the girl is a mime, essentially turning thin air into everything she needs). The arrival of the boyfriend changes things, and eventually ends the relationship between the narrator and the girlfriend when she disappears at the end of the story. The boyfriend’s attitude toward barns (and his burning of them) reflects the inevitability of relationships coming to a natural end. For him, the burning of barns is equally inevitable. As he tells the narrator, it’s “like that’s why [barns] were put there from the very beginning. No grief to anyone. They just… vanish. One, two, poof!” (142).The narrator’s unease that the girlfriend is not returning his calls reflects the sense of loss when a relationship ends.

The story also reflects an exploration of good and evil contextualized within the novel’s theme of Perception Versus Reality. When the narrator sees the girl mime peeling mandarin oranges, he feels “the reality of everything around me being siphoned away. Unnerving, to say the least” (134). The feeling promptly makes him think of Eichmann on trial in Israel for his collaboration with the Nazis, an evocative symbol for evil. The narrator begins to believe that the boyfriend is evil, perceiving that he takes a perverse joy in destruction (burning barns). Conversely, the girlfriend represents a kind of innocence for the narrator, while the narrator perceives himself as the everyman, torn between innocence and evil (he is eerily drawn to the boyfriend’s description of barn burning, not even fully understanding why).