Did you know my dad enterted one of them great plantations and rubbed dung all over one of their rugs?"
"No Sarty, you ain't tell me anything like that."
"That's cause the day he died I never looked back. I decided that my momma, my aunt, my brothers, my dad, they were all part of the past and I was headed towards the future."
"Weren't you scared of being on your own? You were only ten."
"Well, the owner of the plantation, De Spain, felt bad for killin my dad for startin the fire, and decided to pay for me to go stay at one of his servant's quarters. It was there I spent the next couple years learnin to read and write and became obsessed wth trains."
"Ha, I remember. The first time I met you, you was playing with a minitature toy train in school."
"Yeah, we were 13 ronud that time and I though you were the prettiest girl in town. Funny how we got married at 16. You sure were svelte back then."
"I'm svelte now Sarty, lean like a grasshopper."
"More like a pig..."
"What did you say Sarty De Spain?"
"Nothin. Anyway, I saw my mom the other day."
"How is she farin?"
"She's alright. De Spain gave her a job cleaning the house with that black butler. My aunt worked in the house too and my brother got up to no good stealing from local stores."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah, ma told me he was upset over what had happened that night when I was ten and decided to leave home too. Tried sharecroppin like pa. Wasn't successful though and stole to cover his
"A lawyer?"
"Yeah, the kind me and pap had to deal with when he was 'ccused of burnin barns. He never did pay those ten buschels of corn...but we all did."
Sarty took off his shoes and clothes and got ready for bed.
Works Cited
Byres, TJ. Sharecropping and Sharecroppers. London: F. Cass, 1983. Print.
Comprone, Joseph. "Literature and the Writing Process: A Pedagogical Reading of William Faulkner's "Barn Burning." Jstor.org. College Literature, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Faulkner, William. "Barn Burning." Lake-Sumter Community College | Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Priddy, Anna, and Harold Bloom. Bloom's How to Write About William Faulkner. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2010. Print.
Barn Burning William Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" was published in 1939. The setting and mood of the story reflect the Great Depression, and class conflict is at the heart of the "Barn Burning." "Barn Burning" is about a family of poor farm workers, and the interpersonal conflicts that arise due to their lowly station in life. The Snopes family consists of Colonel Sartoris (Sarty) who is the protagonist of "Barn
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It is important to notice the fact that despite the pressures from his father he decides to make his own choice and confront him. Therefore, the short story closes as a perfect circle with a somewhat similar action, this time the outcome differing. Thus, while in the beginning, Sarty would have lied for his parent, under the obligation of the Court, this time it was his own unquestionable choice
boy afraid? Why is the father able to escape punishment? At the beginning of the story, Abner Snopes is being tried for the burning of a barn that belongs to the man on whose land he is a sharecropper. The boy, Abner's son Sarty, is afraid because he is the lone eyewitness who could potentially testify against his father. In some sense, Sarty's fear is the tipoff to the court
Barn Burning" by William Faulkner and "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" By Joyce Carol Oates are coming of age stories that detail the lives of their adolescent protagonists. These stories reveal the strained relationships that adolescents have with their parents at the juncture of critical identity formation. Both Faulkner and Oates exhibit what Zender calls a "self-consciously ambiguous approach to motive" that creates "a pleasing sense
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