William Faulkner is remembered for his many fictional short stories and essays. One of his most well-known and beloved stories is a story titled “Barn Burning,” a coming-of-age narrative set in the aftermath of the war in the South. Here, a young protagonist named Colonel Sartoris Snopes confronts his antagonist father, Abner. Named for a fictional Civil War hero, Colonel Snopes, or Sarty as he called him, is a ten-year-old boy born into a poor family of sharecroppers headed by a ruthless, vengeful, and angry man. Faulkner describes Sarty physically as a boy, small for his age, wiry, wearing patched, faded jeans that were too small for him, with no shoes. He has brown, disheveled hair, gray eyes, and is “wild as a storm” (179). Emotionally, Sarty is a desperate, grieving and fearful young man who learns to overcome these limitations to make the most important decision of his life and, in the process, becomes a man.
Faulkner does a masterful job of giving the reader an undeniable sense of Sarty’s despair. At Harris’s trial, while waiting to be called as a witness, Faulkner states that the boy is filled with a mixture of emotion but “mainly despair” (178). The cause of this discouragement is twofold; he is expected to lie and adopt his father’s enemies as his own. The pressure to lie is exerted by her father. Sarty thinks to himself: “Aim for me to lie … with that frenzied grievance and desperation. And I’ll have to hit” (179). It is quite evident that Sarty was no stranger to his father’s demand for unity from him, and yet it is equally evident that he feels a high degree of desperation to intimidate. Enemies are something else. This is self-imposed despondency. In his teenage mind he can’t come to any other conclusion than that his father’s enemies must be his own. He sees the “enemy” of his father and reflects “in that desperation” that they are “ours! Mine and his at the same time! He is my father” (179). The desperation stems from his feeling that he must hate those his father hates.
This despair gives way to another even more bitter emotion, that of grief. While the words despair and pain have similar connotations, it seems clear that Faulkner saw them as distinctly separate characteristics of this young man. Faulkner repeatedly states that Sarty is full of “pain and despair” (179) both. The despair refers to the hopelessness Sarty feels, while the pain refers to the intense regret for the choice he must make. Sarty understands the morality of issues. Though hampered by his surroundings, he nonetheless has an inner principle of moral decency. A war rages in his mind between his loyalty to blood and his civic responsibility. It is said to be like “being pulled in two directions… between two teams of horses” (186). This tug jolts him inside of him and demands a response. Sarty knows his father is wrong, but he also feels intense pain at the inevitable choice he must make; this is the source of his grievance.
Such a young child, faced with such a difficult situation, cannot help but feel a sense of fear. Indeed, Sarty is described as filled with “fear” (178) and “terror” (182). Faulkner tells us that Sarty’s youth, coupled with his father’s brutality, creates a yearning to be “free” (182) while generating “enough weight to keep you rooted in his place” (182). . “Fear,” says the Bible, “has torment” and Sarty is indeed a tormented soul. That is, until they arrive at Mayor De Spain’s house and Sarty sees his house: “in that instant he forgot his father and their terror and despair” (182). And this sets the stage for our hero to shine.
In this visit Sarty comes to understand that it is possible to free himself from his father’s influence. For him, the house looks like a “Palace of Justice” (182) which is a symbol of civic justice and is undoubtedly the impression given to the young man by his inner desire that his father be held accountable for his deeds. . He knows that his father’s crimes cannot continue. This visit marks the turning point in his mentality, the point at which the ten-year-old decides to become a man.
It seems that Faulkner wants us to see through the eyes of the child the fact that each of us must choose our own path, that life is a series of decisions that begin early in our childhood and define who we will be later in life. . We control our course, not the blood of ancestry, not the family relationship, and we can change our direction if we stay true to our convictions and choose to do good instead of evil.
Sarty makes his choice; he will be true to himself. As he runs down the dirt road that leads to the de Spain house, Sarty can feel his blood racing and his heart pounding, but his blood isn’t slowing him down like he’d assumed, it’s driving him forward. ; overcoming despair, overlooking his fear and ignoring his hurt; he now he is, for all intents and purposes, a man. His childhood is as dead as his father seems to be; his future is as dark and uncertain as the night sky and the dark forest he walks through, as uncertain as adult life really is. The story ends with the dawn of a new day; symbolically representing the new opportunity of life that this young protagonist has gained. The old familiar feelings of “despair” and “pain” (191) are still present, but the “terror and fear” (191) are now gone. No future decision in life can be so difficult; no other night can be so dark, because now he is the master of his own destiny.
