Barn Burning Term Paper

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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 ...

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" (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….....

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