Barn Burning

A detailed Summary of Barn Burning

"Blood is thicker than water." This phrase has been said many times by many people, but in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" it is put to the test. Colonel Sartoris Snopes, known as Sarty, is a young boy in conflict over his "old fierce pull of blood" to his father and what he knows to be truthful and honest. Sarty is the son of Abner Snopes, a sharecropper who time after time finds himself in legal battles over his confrontational actions and vindictive act of burning barns. Sarty has been taught that you are loyal to your blood, no matter what, but

Sarty's conscience tells him what his father does is wrong. As Sarty comes into his own, he struggles between his "blood" and the need to do what he knows is right.

When the narrator first introduces us to Sarty, he is standing in back of a store being used as courtroom where his father is on trail for burning Mr. Harris' barn after a dispute over a pig. Sarty is a scared, hungry little boy wanting to tell the truth but not sure, he has the courage to speak out against his father. When the Justice of the Peace called Sarty to testify, Faulkner reveals Sarty's internal struggle with lying for his father when he knows his father is guilty of burning down Mr. Harris' barn. Sa

rty says to himself, "He aims for me to lie, and I will have to do hit." To Sarty's relief he does not have to testify, and his father is not charged, but is ordered to leave town. As they leave the courthouse, Sarty tries to prove his love for his father by fighting to defend him as a boy from the crowd yells out "Barn burner." Sarty is desperate to please and believe in his father, but as time goes on, the "old fierce pull of blood" starts to weaken as he begins to see the truth.

Throughout the story, Faulkner uses point-of-view allowing the reader to feel the struggle Sarty feels between his "blood" and his conscience. Sarty is a dynamic character growing from a scared boy afraid of his father to a young man with extreme courage willing to break from his father to do what he knows is morally right. At last, Sarty gained the courage and strength to break free from the "old fierce pull of blood" and prove that blood is not always thicker than water. It is at this point we see that Sarty has come of age.

As they arrived at the new farm to sharecrop, Sarty describes it as a "paintless two-room house identical to almost a dozen others they had stopped at before." Abner takes Sarty to main house of the farm where the landowner, Major De Spain, lives. Sarty has never seen anything so big and beautiful, and the statement he makes, "Hit's big as a courthouse" is ironic considering his father is always in legal trouble. The beauty and peacefulness of the De Spain house gives Sarty a look into a different world. It is a world that offers him hope that his father will change, " Maybe it will even change him now from what maybe he couldn't

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1116
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English