Barn Burning Conflict Analysis

He won't git none! We'll gether hit and hide hit!" This is another attempt by Sarty to find his place. Although he knows his father is guilty of ruining the rug, he is willing to help his father hide the crop to avoid paying damages. His father, Abner, even tries to influence Sarty's decision.

The first thing we know of his thoughts shows the conflict he feels. After first identifying Mr. Harris as his father’s enemy, he corrects himself fiercely; thinking, “our enemy…ourn! mine and hisn both! He’s my Father!”(84). The dual instincts of loyalty and integrity are what plague Sarty throughout the story.

(402) Sarty knows that his father's habit of burning barns is wrong, but his loyalty to honor and justice almost get the best of him. Sarty nearly confesses the truth when he called to testify, but the Justice of the Peace dismisses him before he can speak. Once outside the courtroom, Sarty is again loyal to his family, to his "blood ties." Another boy hisses "Barn burner!" as Sarty and his father are walking out of the courtroom, one thin, wiry body after another.

It is hard for Sarty to have a sense of loyalty to his father and to do what is right especially when he knows that his father’s actions are wrong. Sarty alludes to Mr. Harris as “his father’s enemy (our enemy he thought in that despair, orn, mine and hisn both! He’s my father! ” Even with the accusations that were against his father Sarty still feels like he should protect his father. “The old fierce pull of blood” is what is preventing him from turning in his father.

When Sarty was sent out to get the oil, Sarty wanted to “run on and on and never look back”, but instead he tried to stop his father by sidetracking him to “send a n****r”. This caused his father to demand the mother to hold Sarty so that he could not get away, but he did. All Sarty wanted to do was warn the landlord, De Spain of the barn burning. Consequently two shots were fired. Sarty will never know if his father and brother were shot, but he does try to keep running as the “grief and despair now no longer terror and fear but just grief and despair”, and breaks the blood tie from his family as he no longer wishes to suffer from his fathers actions.

Sarty ran into the woods for safety. He never knew how long he kept running away from the despair and fear of the choices that he and his father made that day. Little did Sarty recognize that running through that door at the de Spain mansion led to freedom for himself and his family: “Perhaps, it will take a Sarty Snopes to enter through another front door and, though promptly sent away, learn that he has the capacity and the willingness to make moral decisions that will lead him, not to death, but to life” (Samway 103). Sarty, knowing he would never feel the terror and despair of his father actions again, he chose to grieve, and made an adult decision to move forward to a new beginning in life with his integrity intact.

Charcter Analylis Barn Burning Character Analysis William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” In “Barn Burning” the setting is a time when people drove horse wagons and the workingmen were generally farmers. The major character in this story is Colonel Sartoris Snopes, called “Sarty” by his family who is a ten-year-old boy. In the beginning, Sarty is portrayed as a confused and frightened young boy. He is in despair over the burden of doing the right thing or sticking by his family, as his father states,” You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you.” Sarty’s father, Abner Snopes is accused of burning down a barn and Sarty is called upon to testify against his father and to tell the events of what happened. He wants to tell the truth because it is the right thing to do, but he knows he might have lie to save his father from being reprimanded.

Yet on this hill, he has a moment of clarity and... ... middle of paper ... ...nd a source and cause for his family’s poverty, and unhappiness. Abner is in denial that his circumstances are mostly a direct result of his decisions. Instead, he hates society and the educated man. Therefore, Abner directs his anger towards them, fighting to regain his pride and idea of justice. Through the support of the narrator’s tone, these two diversely different characters are brought together because they go through the same strategies and expressions of pain, unhappiness, injustice and abuse.

Use of Blood in “Barn Burning” “Barn Burning” is about the struggle of a boy to do what is right during the Post Civil War era. The main character, Sartoris Snopes, is a poor son of a migrant tenant farmer. In the opening scene he is being asked by a circuit judge about the burning of a farmer’s barn by his father. The boy does not tell on his father and is not forced to do so, but he thinks that he would have done so had he been asked. The father, Abner Snopes, served in the Civil War for both sides and has difficulty venting his anger.

Struggle for Morality In the short story “Barn Burning” by author William Faulkner, the story follows a very young boy by the name of Colonel Sartoris Snopes, or Sarty for short. Is the main character in this tale of a moral boy with a very cold and vindictive father who possesses very little morality. The story starts with Sarty being asked to testify against his father in a barn burning incident and right away Sarty’s inner thoughts about truth, justice, and loyalty to family are tested. Sarty’s father is found innocent but told to leave town as soon as possible. They move on to take up work at a farm doing sharecropper work.