Barn Burning Sarty Essay

In William Faulkner’s compelling short story, “Barn Burning”, a young boy named Colonel Sartoris Snopes, or Sarty, faces the difficult conflict between his deep desire for justice and his obliged loyalty to his family–specifically his father, Abner. In using a limited omniscient narrator, Faulkner focuses on the main character of Sarty through his thoughts and firsthand experiences, while also producing a greater amount of necessary information to the reader. Sarty’s thoughts during the four days that transpire in the story discern his sense of morality and contrast it to his father’s actions, while the more enlightened aspect of the narrator provides details about the future of Sarty. Faulkner explores a person’s ability to separate from

During the scene in which Sarty sees de Spain’s mansion and compares it to a courthouse, the narrator describes a reason for the “surge of peace and joy” that Sarty could not have contrived “being too young for that: They are safe from him. People whose lives are a part of this peace and dignity are beyond his touch”(206). The narrator knows the reason for Sarty suddenly being overcome with a sense of peace and happiness, even though Sarty is unable to articulate it. One night, when the family camps outside, Abner builds a “small fire, neat, niggard almost, a shrewd fire”, which was characteristic of all of the fires Abner built.(204) The narrator discusses the possibility of Sarty’s questioning of the small, calculated size of the fire, and eventually states, had he been “older still, he might have divined the true reason: that the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father’s being”(204). Largely illuminating Abner’s character and the meaning of fire to him, the narrator contrasts Abner to his son, ultimately proving the possibility of differences between family members. In addition, by saying Sarty was far too young to understand certain details of his situation, Faulkner presents to the reader a naive and innocent side to Sarty, suggesting an easily influenced but also uncorrupted child. The quality of Sarty causing him to be easily swayed goes to show the strength of his inner sense of morality, as his father is an extremely influential man but is still ultimately unable to coax his ten-year old son to blindly follow him in his unjust acts. The narrator characterizes Sarty and Abner to show the disparity between the two and the feasibility of separating from one’s expected