Adam's Post

It's like Sophie's choice...

Faulkner’s use of a sophisticated diction found in Barn Burning helps create a glimpse behind the reasoning of many choices that Abner and his son Sarty make throughout the story. Sarty, the main character, is faced with a difficult choice of whether or not to remain loyal to his family or be true to himself/right path.  This is heavily presented in the opening scene where Sarty is faced with following the rule of the law or following his father’s idea of what is right after the Barn Burnings. However, through the choice of diction used in the story, Faulkner is able to highlight many important factors that are key in the reasoning behind Abner’s intense pressure on Sarty. One can infer that with Abner’s apparent diction, which includes broken or choppy syntactic schemes, yet brutally realistic comments, Abner grew up in the south with little education, therefore most likely not given the tools needed to think independently and develop his own ideas. The symbolism of education and the fact that Abner fought in the civil war and is now a poor sharecropper, who was treated like a slave by upper-class landowners, engraved moral values in Abner of hard work, a strong dislike for a system of financial classes, and the law . This poses a challenge when Abner continues to carry down these same morals through his children and attempts to create the loyalty that he had to his parents with his son Sarty. Sarty initially suffers from being a puppet to his father’s image of who he should be. However, in the latter half of the story, Sarty is able to dismiss these ideas and begins to find himself, while trying not to be “…pulled two ways like between two teams of horses…” (258). Faulkner cleverly uses diction as a key element in understanding the logic and background of Abner.