Barn burning: conflict and social class in Faulkner

Barn Burning

In Faulkner's "Barn Burning," the reader is presented with the inner experiences of a ten-year-old boy struggling to overcome the amoral and violent family culture into which he has been born. The boy's relationships with most of his family seem to be entirely overshadows, if not made non-existent, in comparison to his relationship with his father. In a rather Freudian sense, young Sarty must seek to come to terms with his mixed love and hatred for his sociopathic father, and learn to separate his own identity from that of his sire. In many ways, Sarty is indeed his father son and has a lot in common with him, yet on the other hand he is morally distinct and very much his own person.

Both Sarty and his father seem to have very passionate and uncontrolled natures. Sarty's passion is evident both in his chaotic and occasionally melodramatic thoughts (which the reader is privileged to overhear), and in his occasional outbursts. Even as his father seems insane when he begins burning barns, so Sarty seems somewhat insane when he blacks out and gets in a berserker fight, with a loss of self he describes thus: "Again he could not see, whirling; there was a face in a red haze ... " (Faulkner) Unlike the other members of his family who are described as "bovine" and somehow subhuman, Sarty seems quick witted and quick footed. One might argue that Sarty's passion is a difference between himself and his father -- for on the surface Abner seems remarkable unflappable -- but in reality Abner's greatest flaw is that he cannot figure out what to do with his passion. That the emotion is there is unmistakable, for his barn burning is far from rational, and seems triggered by anger. One can almost imagine Sarty, who keeps crying out "He won't git no twenty bushels! He won't git none!" (Faulkner) growing into a more reserved fellow who, rather than screaming, burns barns.

The difference between getting in a fist fight and burning a barn is, however, more than just a matter of degree -- it is primarily a matter of repression and expression. Sarty and his father are so actively unalike because they have a totally different approaches to their passion. Abner is extremely repressive with his feelings. One notices that at a moment when his rage must certainly be at its highest, he stands with a "face absolutely calm, the grizzled eyebrows tangled above the cold eyes, the voice almost pleasant, almost gentle." This calm pervades even when he is acting out on his rage, and with restrained ease preparing to burn down a barn. His son, on the other hand, does not restrain his passion beneath such a veneer and subsequently is allowed to vent it out of his system without burning barns. Abner seems dispassionate, but has uncontrolled fits of fire -- his coolness is the thing that enforces his fire. Sarty seems firey, but underneath he is more level-headed and has the sense to avoid crime.

The two share a certain inability to separate themselves from their family, and a fierce sense of loyalty. One sees the parallels between Abner's speech, "You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you..." (Faulkner) and the ways in which Sarty at first cannot distinguish between an enemy of his father and an enemy of himself, or in which he gets into fights for his father. Yet Abner seems to remain a part of his family till the end (after all, when Sarty goes to tell the landowner of his father's crimes, Abner does not harm him, only attempts to restrain him), while Sarty breaks away from his family, quite literally. In tearing out of his mother's grasp, and (unintentionally) bringing down death on his father, Sarty at once betrays his blood and in some ways fulfills it. He has shown that he is capable of being as destructive as his father, in that he destroys his family, but he has also shown that he is not as immoral as the rest of the family. He has a greater loyalty to the human race, to civilization and to "only truth, justice."