Sarty and Abner: Identity and Morality in Faulkner's Barn Burning

Introduction: Sarty's Inner Struggle

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 overshadowed — 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's son and has a great deal in common with him; yet on the other hand, he is morally distinct and very much his own person.

Shared Passion, Different Expressions

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 unhinged when he blacks out and enters 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 marks a difference between himself and his father — for on the surface Abner seems remarkably 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 man who, rather than screaming, burns barns.

Repression Versus Expression

The difference between getting into 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 take entirely different approaches to their passion. Abner is extremely repressive with his feelings. 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 on his rage, as he prepares with restrained ease to burn down a barn.

His son, on the other hand, does not restrain his passion beneath such a veneer, and is consequently allowed to vent it out of his system without resorting to arson. Abner seems dispassionate but suffers uncontrolled fits of destructive fire — his coolness is the very thing that enforces his violence. Sarty seems fiery, but underneath he is more level-headed and has the sense to avoid crime. As William Faulkner constructs him, Sarty's visible emotional turbulence is paradoxically the safer outlet.

Conclusion: Sarty's Moral Independence

In the final analysis, though Sarty is obviously his father's son, he is in the end a far more noble and pure being than any of the others in his family. He has somehow become an aware human being, though he lives among people described as bovine and automaton-like. He has somehow become moral, though raised in a shifting, amoral household. His passion comes out pure, clean, and honest, unlike the strange, cool violence his father practices. His loyalty is fierce, but not blind. Though he suffers from the "handicap of being young" — in a family and world where youth bars one from the freedom to forge one's own way — he still manages a surprising degree of moral independence.