Barn Burning Essay

1Many situations in one's life may lead them to question themselves and the lining between right or wrong. 2One extreme situation can be observed in William Faulkner's bildungsroman "Barn Burning," 3which takes place around thirty years after the civil war in a make-believe Mississippi land named Yoknapatwhpa where the main character, Sarty, is put to the extreme test of morals and obligation. 4The story focuses mainly on Sarty and his struggle to choose between whether he should stay obedient to his father and be true to his blood, or do what is best for him and listen to his conscience. 5Although family and blood ties are important and in most cases should be followed, it is obvious that the struggles of supporting his father and his motives ultimately lead him to betraying his blood in the end over differences in morals and ideals. 6Because Sarty's conversion from absolutely supporting his father to the eventual betrayal show the conflict within him, the story causes him to question the motives and actions he will choose to take. The right decision for to Sarty make shows 7blood is truly not always thicker than water.

The first of Sarty's inner conflicts is "the old fierce pull of blood." Faulkner uses his father's forcefulness to portray the "pull of blood." Although Abner is Sarty's father, his "pull" on Sarty to lie and choose him over what Sarty knows himself to be right demonstrates the characterization of not only how horrible of a father he is but also the irony in the which he could care less for his son but is attempting to persuade him by the means of telling the importance of blood. Through Sarty's struggles to "stick to [his] own blood," he becomes increasingly aware of his conscience when as they step towards the new tenant farm, he sees the house as "big as the courthouse" and feels a "surge of peace and joy." Faulkner conveys that in spite of the fact he is too young to form these feelings into words, he senses that he is safe, so even as he "remember[s] his father again...the terror and despair did not return." Moreover, Sarty has no "terror and despair" because he assumes they are "safe from him." In this case, Sarty's form of himself truly embodies his father; consequently, by him saying this, the auth¬¬or is trying to convey how Sarty's "terror and despair" come from his father. Throughout the story, Sarty struggles with the decision on whether or not he himself believes his own "blood" is right. At first, Sarty feels as though Justice has wronged him and his father. Sarty "crie[s] at the Justice: 'He ain't done it! He ain't burnt [it]!" In other words, at this point of the story, he is completely submissive and controlled by the fear of his father. As Sarty cries to the Justice that his father "ain't done it," he author uses the desperate tone to imply that he is also pleading to his father that he "ain't done" anything wrong; as he realizes his father is wrong, the story comes to its climax and the start of the end of the bildungsroman, when his father tells him to fetch the oil he struggles with himself the entire way, 2which brings up his driving point, to either betray his father or continue