Abner Snopes is indeed the character that stands out from all of the rest in this short narrative by William Faulkner by his personality and attitude towards the world. With Abner being a poor white tenant farmer in the south, he feels like he is being oppressed and taken advantage of just like the former black slaves. With Abner, a veteran of the Civil war, being on the same poor level as former slaves just barely getting by and hardly able to provide for his family, he flips to the dark side and "ignites" a social class war between the rich and poor.
Abner is undoubtedly a terrifying and mysterious figure in the story, and if it wasn't for Sarty's (Abner's son)thoughts to the reader he would just be a one-dimensional bad guy who just gets mad, burns stuff, then gets killed. Sarty even go's far enough to call his father "brave" for doing what he does, for doing what he feels right despite all of the odds of getting caught, and risks of what type of consequences he might encounter. Sarty even helps Abner's true personality come out by accompanying him in burning barns of the upper class. Abner may seem flat and without personality throughout the story, but under the tough outer shell there is a fiery passion for revenge on all of the people around him that make him feel inadequate, pathetic, and useless to society, and most importantly, his family.
But for a ruthless man who controls his family with physical and psychological violence, and makes them accomplices in his favorite pastime: burning barns, he is definitely not brave, just uncontrollably mad at the rest of the world for having it better than him.
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