Barn Burning
Barn BurningBarn Burning "You�re getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain�t going to have any blood to stick to you." This quote from William Faulkner�s "Barn Burning" does reveal a central issue in the story, as Jane Hiles suggests in her interpretation. The story is about blood ties, but more specifically, how these ties affect Sarty (the central character of the story). The story examines the internal conflict and dilemma that Sarty faces. When the story begins, Sarty and his family are in a courtroom. Sarty, known in a proper setting as Colonel Sartoris, which in itself gives an insight into the families mentality. Sarty�s father, Abner Snopes is being accused of a barn burning. Right away, as Sarty is called to testify, you get an idea of what is going through the boy�s head, and the mentality that has be ingrained in him. He thinks to himself, Enemy! Enemy!, referring to the people that his father and his family for that matter are up against. Sarty would later discover that things are not always the way that his father leads everyone to believe they are. Sarty, somewhere deep down wants to just do what is right, but being roughly 10 years old, I don�t think he quite has that figured out yet. His sense of right and wrong has been biased under the tyranny of his father. We also get a good idea of the personality of the father, Abner, by the way Sarty describes his physical appearance. Abner is not a man of a lot of words, demonstrated in many instances. We see this in the way he addresses his family, in the way he communicates with other characters, and most importantly in his outrageous stunts in his attempts to prove that know one will ever run over Abner Snopes and his family. He more or less uses actions to speak for him. That�s sort of the whole idea behind Abner Snopes. He�s a man with so much pride that he will go to any lengths to get revenge upon those who wrong him or try to own him, even if it means breaking the law. His actions, make bold statements about what kind of man he is. Barn burning is his largest and always final statement. But, he sort of builds up to that, as we can see in the story. Once Abner and his family are run out of town in the beginning of the story (which seems to be a frequent occurrence with this family) they find another home and another farm to work. Immediately, Abner takes Sarty up to the landlords house, where Abner purposely steps in manure and walks into the house and proceeds to rub the manure into a very fine rug. There seems to be no apparent reason for the action other than the fact that the landlord in a way owns Abner Snopes and...
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