Colonel Sartoris Snopes

Colonel Sartoris Snopes

In William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” Colonel Sartoris Snopes is a young man torn due to experiences in his young life. The volume of wisdom he possesses is superior and far beyond his age. There are numerous complex, grueling, and strenuous situations in which he is involved, yet he stands strong in his convictions and triumphs into the freedom and peacefulness he so stalwartly desired.

Colonel Snopes is “small for his age, small and wiry like his father.” (Faulkner 188) His clothing and appearance “patched and faded jeans even too small for him, with straight, uncombed, brown hair and eyes gray and wild as storm scud” (188) are consequences from his father’s wayward, unruly choices causing the family to be vastly impoverished. Colonel does not allow his small size or his youthful age to limit what he can accomplish. Colonel awakes timely to help his father and older brother in the fields; he chops wood for both cooking and the family’s source of heating. Colonel always “worked steadily”, (195) an admirable trait that “he had [received] from his mother.” (195)

Colonel lived with torment string within him. He knew the dark truth about his father; not agreeing with his horrible actions. He is called to testify in court where is father is accused of burning a neighbors barn. He knows that his father had sent a man to burn the barn down and was guilty. He is overwhelmed with “frantic grief and despair.”(188) He knows the truth and knows that he is expected to lie so that his father can remain a free man. Colonel is spared that horrifying decision when the lawyers refuse to question him. Not free from punishment of his father, his father takes him aside and asks him if he was going to tell the truth. He ...

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... lying, and general unrest had to stop. He ran to big white house where he had first felt freedom and warned them of the trouble that was headed for the barn. He did not let his bare feet slow him down. He outran the master of the house; all he could hear was his “blood and breath roaring.” (199) He continued to run after he heard the shots fired; finally coming to rest on top of a hill. He sat with “his back toward what he had called home for four days anyhow, his face toward the dark woods.” (199) He faced the darks woods and entered them knowing that although the woods seemed dark, they would lead to the light of freedom and peace. He had stood by his convictions, became a man and “he never looked back.” (200)

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. “Barn Burning”. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Mays, Kelly J. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013. Print