Free Essays on Barn Burning

Barn Burning William Faulkner’s short story, â€Å"The Barn Burning,† discusses the problems of the sharecropper, in the late nineteenth century South; Primarily a story about the relationship between father and son, the story presents itself through the use of symbolism. The most vital symbol in the story is fire. The fire symbolizes the father’s anger and, his lack of respect for other people’s property. The story begins and ends with the burning down of a barn. Throughout the story, Faulkner uses symbolism in his struggle between morality and ethics. Is blood truly thicker than water? Fire is used to represent anger. Abner always just walked away without much reaction, but inside he was always raging,. Because Abner would not vent or let out his anger it just kept growing and growing like a fire. The more injustice he was given the more the fire grew within himself. Abner would let the fire grow until he finally destroyed what seemed to have shown him the injustice. When Abner becomes angry, rather than searching for a reasonable answer for his problems, he resorts to rashly destroying the property of whomever he thinks wronged him. This shows the lack of respect Abner has for other people’s property and belongings. This side of Abner shows he feels he can destroy anything to make things better and relates to fire perfectly. Fire destroys anything in its way, has respect for nothing and never feels remorse for what it has done. Just like fire, Abner does not respect boundaries. Abner stops at nothing and respects no one. Abner’s relation to fire de monstrates his relation to his own anger, the immerse power that his anger has over him. Rather than venting his feelings, he holds them in, as he contains the small fire, until he can lash out with the full force of the hatred. Abner’s son Sarty was the character with the most internal conflict throughout the story. He was faced with many different situations tha... Free Essays on Barn Burning Free Essays on Barn Burning Barn Burning â€Å"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 â€Å"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 peop le 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 t o get revenge upon those who wr... Free Essays on Barn Burning Barn Burning William Faulkner’s short story, â€Å"The Barn Burning,† discusses the problems of the sharecropper, in the late nineteenth century South; Primarily a story about the relationship between father and son, the story presents itself through the use of symbolism. The most vital symbol in the story is fire. The fire symbolizes the father’s anger and, his lack of respect for other people’s property. The story begins and ends with the burning down of a barn. Throughout the story, Faulkner uses symbolism in his struggle between morality and ethics. Is blood truly thicker than water? Fire is used to represent anger. Abner always just walked away without much reaction, but inside he was always raging,. Because Abner would not vent or let out his anger it just kept growing and growing like a fire. The more injustice he was given the more the fire grew within himself. Abner would let the fire grow until he finally destroyed what seemed to have shown him the injustice. When Abner becomes angry, rather than searching for a reasonable answer for his problems, he resorts to rashly destroying the property of whomever he thinks wronged him. This shows the lack of respect Abner has for other people’s property and belongings. This side of Abner shows he feels he can destroy anything to make things better and relates to fire perfectly. Fire destroys anything in its way, has respect for nothing and never feels remorse for what it has done. Just like fire, Abner does not respect boundaries. Abner stops at nothing and respects no one. Abner’s relation to fire de monstrates his relation to his own anger, the immerse power that his anger has over him. Rather than venting his feelings, he holds them in, as he contains the small fire, until he can lash out with the full force of the hatred. Abner’s son Sarty was the character with the most internal conflict throughout the story. He was faced with many different situations tha... Free Essays on Barn Burning William Faulkner’s short story â€Å"Barn Burning† describes a steadfast type of relationship between the poor and wealthy people of the Civil War Era. The Snope’s Family, sharecrops to make a living. Abner Snopes, the main character of the story has hatred towards wealthy people. He lashes out at them in resentment and burns their barns. Through the story he shows a blatant disregard for the law and respect for his family. Abner’s character does not change throughout the story showing and proving that he is a heartless, vindictive, and violent man. The beginning of the story starts with Abner and his family being sentenced to leave the country. He shows no remorse for his actions to his family, never once apologizing. Once the family has relocated due to his disregard to the law, he begins to order around his wife, his sister and two daughters to start to unload the wagon as soon as they arrive at their new home. Abner enters De Spain’s house without permission and then ruins his rug by wiping his horse manure covered feet. Once Abner was told to clean the rug he made his daughters clean the rug and then to hang it dry. Abner then ruines the rug further by taking a rock to it. When he returned the rug he threw it on the porch instead of properly handing it to him. Once the damages were evident he was charged to repay the damages. The result of his sentence to repay for damages infuriated Abner causing him to retaliate by attempting to burn Major De Spain’s barn. Abner’s character is unchanged even when he is caught breaking the law. His first experience of breaking the law comes about when he was in the Civil War, not fighting in the war but stealing horses from both sides of the lines. The story began with Abner in court over Hyatt 2 the burning of Mr. Harris’s barn. However the was not enough evidence to rule against him. He was told by the judge to leave the country. Abner was not in his new hou... Free Essays on Barn Burning William Faulkner’s short story â€Å"Barn Burning† describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War. The main character, Abner Snopes, sharecrops to make a living for his family. He despises wealthy people. Out of resentment for wealthy people, he goes and burns their barns to get revenge. Abner’s character over the course of the story is unchanging in that he is cold hearted, lawless, and violent. First, Abner’s unchanging character shows his cold heartedness. After being sentenced to leave the country for burning a man’s barn, he shows no emotions to his family. During the story, there was not a time when he apologized or offered a word of encouragement to them. His tone of voice when talking to them is bitter and bossy, and he never said thank you. Later in the story after they had arrived at their next house, he orders his wife, her sister and his two daughters to unload the wagon. He walks with his son to DeSpain’s house where he entered without given permission, and proceeded to wipe his feet that was covered with horse manure, thus staining the rug. â€Å"Abner moves through life with no regard for his fellow humans and with no respect for their right to material possessions† (731). After being told to clean the rug, Abner took a rock and further ruined it. His coldness is shown when he demands his two daughters to clean the rug in pots of lye and then hanging it to dry. Later in the evening Abner calls his son to get to return the rug to DeSpain. When Abner returned to DeSpain’s house he threw the rug on the porch instead of knocking on the door and returning it to DeSpain properly. Abner was later charged for the damages he did to the rug. â€Å"This is enough to satisfy Abner yet again that the social system only works in behalf of the rich, and he sets out that night to redress this wrong by burning DeSpain’s barn† (855). Abner’s unchanging character is evident no...