Critical Analysis #1 – Short Story Essay Barn Burning: Sarty’s Journey to Manhood Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” is characteristic of Faulkner’s style via its setting. However, the story is driven by character interaction and this is what makes it great. In the story, Colonel Sartoris Snopes or Sarty is the son of Abner Snopes, a cruel man on trial for the burning of another man’s barn. Sarty’s life is filled with conflict, but where most children would falter, Sarty rises through adversity to face his trials like a man rather than a boy. Sarty has many character traits, but most of all he is loyal, adherent to principle, and youthful. Sarty’s loyalty at first seems debatable; after all, in the end he betrays his father. On further examination, though, Sarty does in fact provide his father with the oil in the end. Even though in the courthouse he nearly betrays his father with an opposing testimony, when they go outside and he hears the boys calling his father a barn burner, he comes immediately to his father’s defense, engaging them in a fight during which he sheds his own blood to protect his father’s good name. After the rug-ruining incident, Sarty affectionately addresses his father as “Pap” and promises that de Spain “won’t git no twenty bushels! He won’t git none!”(62) Here we note that on a smaller issue that does not defy his principle so inherently as barn burning, he is immovably loyal to his blood. He maintains some kind of faith in Abner when considering the possibility he wouldn’t burn barns anymore. “Forever he thought. Maybe he’s done satisfied now, now that he has . . .” (61) The reason that this is italicized is because these are italicized in the original quote, indicating he is thinking. He’s unable to complete the thought because he
knows the likelihood that this is true, but this exemplifies Sarty’s dream of paradise; the world in which he and his values can live comfortably with his father. Sarty is youthful because of his age, but this attribute helps define him and grips the reader with further sympathy. His fear of his father and his point of view in looking at Abner are both hints at his age; how intimidating just the footsteps can be, how scared he is by the false leg. Also, not to be omitted is the black-and-white outlook he takes to comfort himself in the first trial when thinking of his father’s opponent: “. . . our enemy he thought in that despair; ourn! Mine and hisn both! He’s my father!”(59)I italicized here for the same reason as earlier; please reference the original quote. His initial thoughts of food are what we view as primitive, and the sort of thing that could distract a child when a serious trial involving his father was progressing. Sarty’s astonishment and wonder at Major de Spain’s home is again youthful; though it is symbolic to him of culture, of maintaining niceties, the comments made are on superficial qualities like size and decoration that suggest a child’s simplification. Our hints at what these things mean to Sarty are provided through Faulkner’s narration; he even outlines this separation for us by observing once while Abner builds a campfire that an older Sarty might wonder why his father, fond of fire, doesn’t build a larger one. Here he has created a mental line for us between his narration of events and Sarty’s feelings and thoughts on them. “Barn Burning” is largely a coming-of-age story, so Sarty’s youth is extremely important, especially in the beginning. The most important character trait one can apply to Sarty is that he is so principled. Returning to his reverence of the de Spain mansion, Sarty remarks inwardly, “Hit’s big as a courthouse . . . They are safe from him”(60). This comparison to a place of
law and justice suggests its importance to Sarty, and the size again his youthful interpretation of its prowess. He hopes even that the magnificence of the mansion will encourage his father to stop burning barns, wishful thinking on one hand but on the other, and excellent outline of one of Sarty’s most angelic character traits: his eternal hope for the soul of his father. Arguably this is selfish to satisfy the reconciliation of his loyalty with his principle, but still altruistic in the sense that he imagines redemption is not an impossible thought for Abner. In the end, Sarty’s morals face their most grueling test, when Abner prepares to burn de Spain’s barn. Sarty pleads, “Ain’t you going to even send a nigger? . . . At least you sent a nigger before!” referring to Abner’s provision of warning to the owners of the last barn (63). This demonstrates that though his loyalty is strong, Sarty cannot sit by and watch this occur. Abner instructs his wife to hold Sarty tightly, but with his aunt and his mother there who both agree with him (though his mother more weakly), Sarty’s moral obligation is more pronounced, and he betrays less of the people he loves by doing what is right. He gives in to his instincts and warns de Spain, but loses his father because of it. In the end Sarty feels both loss and rebirth, losing his family and his name but gaining manhood. The Snopes are a family Faulkner uses over and over, and they are notoriously immoral; Sarty seems to have been their last ray of hope for ethics, and thus needed to shed this name to maintain his principle. Sarty is one of the most interesting characters to encounter in a short story, and how Faulkner skillfully weaves him a psyche in so few pages is evidence to his mastery of writing. His loyalty pairs easily with his youth but opposes his morality, and the juxtaposition of these three characteristics creates a three-dimensional person we can all pity and admire in a very real sense.