Barn Burning - Sarty

Faulkner characterizes Sarty in a very complex way. Sarty is the main character of the story and his thoughts are sometimes inserted in italics, yet the story's point of view is third person omniscient the majority of the time. The narrator usually refers to Sarty as "the boy" and the only way the reader knows his name is through dialogue. Sarty seems to identify himself through his family, as apparent twice when he was surprised that someone was talking to him instead of his brother, and to feel as if he falls in his father's shadow, especially since Sarty notices Abner's back most often and the black coat that he wears. Due to the way he identifies himself with his family, Sarty feels at least partially responsible for the sins of his father, leading him to confess the barn burning to the rich owner. Also, Sarty intensely hates his relatives, thus he hates himself because he feels as if he is part of them. Sarty's confession is not so much a good deed as it is a way to get rid of the guilt that he if feeling. Faulkner does not physically describe Sarty the way he does Abner and the reader is left to make inferences about Sarty. The image of a poor, thin farm boy is not hard to conjure and it is obvious that Sarty is not the most intelligent member of the family, even if he has the most well-developed conscious. Sarty, the character that the reader empathizes with, is left largely under-described by Faulkner.