Ashes ashes we all fall down

The fire represents many things in the story of Barn Burning, many of which pertain to Abner. Abner is a crazy man with a blurry view of the world and, in this case, of the difference between right and wrong. He feels like he has been wronged in life and that that fact gives him the right to employ revenge on the world. According to the text Abner is very controlling; he plans all of the fires down to every detail and that is how he gets away with it. However, fire itself is a very uncontrollable thing. The fire could represent his desire to break free of his life into another, one that can not be tamed and one he has control of.

Fire also represents his anger towards the world. He feels that he should not be put into the level of a share cropper and has resentment towards the fact that he is classed lower than others. When Abner is described dull and metallic words are often used, contrasted to the bright dynamics of a fire. This contrast symbolizes the anger and resentment in his life by portraying obvious differing imagery when reading the story.

Abner setting the fire characterizes his desire for power in the world. The fire is a statement that he is still above the African Americans; it shows that even though he may not be wealthy he still has the ability to create destruction and get away with it. This act represents his desire for a new life, one that puts him in a more "fair" position according to his skin color.

Fire in the Barn Burning can represent many other things, these just being a few of them. The symbols depicted from the fire all work to characterize Abner as a misunderstood individual who has so much anger and resentment within him that he turned to violence and destruction to fulfill his life.

"why you gotta be so mean?" Taylor Swift

In the story Barn Burning, Abner, who is the father of Sarty, is portrayed as more of a “thing” than a human. This is because humans have emotions, feelings, and forms of mercy. However the author does not give portray as Abner being a human being emotionally. The author always describes Abner in the forms of metal such as tin and iron, and describes his hands as claws. These images give off the picture of something that is anything but human. Still he feels the obvious emotion of hatred, which leads his destructiveness, but it seems to have overwhelmed every other emotion. Throughout the story he abuses his family with no regret or hesitation, meaning he doesn't feel the smallest amount of sorrow as a normal human would. This makes his image darken just as his personality is, almost to an evil or corrupt level.

The diction that describes Abner is sophisticated and mean. Abner is describes as very precise, from him walking to how he conducts fires, so much that the author describes him being similar to a clock, which is a tool that exemplifies precision. The way by which he manipulated his son is an example of sophistication, while the tone and ways he talks to people is an example of how he is mean.

The obvious symbols from the story are the burnings or acts of destruction Abner commits. Abner does this because he fought in the Civil War, became traumatized during it, and came back to work alongside the slave he risked his life to keep under him. This makes him hateful towards the social class system because he doesn’t want to be owned as slaves are. The fire is a symbol of revolt against the people who are better off than him or who boss him. Yet the fire is also a symbol of him having control because there are not many things in his life that he does control.

Barn Burning

William Faulkner characterizes Abner Snopes as an antagonistic, “gray [eyed]” father looking to vindicate those who have done him injustice by burning their possessions. Although branded as emotionless, Abner uses fire to vehemently burn down and completely destroy the barns of his enemies. The fire deeply contrasts the image Faulkner makes of Abner; passionate, fiery, and flexible caused by a stiff, cold, and detached man. Faulkner further symbolizes Abner's personality through the “black, flat, and bloodless” shadow against the “starlit road.” This scenery sets a perfect mood for Abner's act of indifferent violence towards his son. The determined, unsympathetic, and aggressive “drive” of Abner to burn barns is ultimately the reason he is shot and killed.

Abner's ruthless personality is recognized as he “struck [his son] with the flat of his hand.” This unwarranted abuse was as if he had “killed a horse fly”; an exhibit of Abner's constant reliance on violence for unnecessary punishments. The exaggerated punishment occurred because of what Abner assumed Sarty would have told the judge, not for what his son had actually done. Faulkner's juxtaposition of Abner hitting his son contrasted with Abner striking a mule shows his lack of sympathy and indifference to his kin in the midst of getting away from the law. The allegiance to familial blood that Abner physically strikes into his son also exposes his hypocrisy; a father's callous infidelity to his son versus a son's forced devotion to his father. Faulkner describes this occurrence as “without fear or anger”; thus further characterizing Abner Snopes as a weathered and indifferent man intent on vengeance.

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.

Barn Burning

"Barn Burning" focuses on the prejudices of the patriarch of the Spores family and the rebellion of Sarty against his father. Abner shows his disdain for African-Americans both literally and symbolically when he and Sarty go to the house of Major de Spain. Abner left "deliberate...prints on pale rug." William Faulkner doesn't call the rug white but pale, referencing skin color. Faulkner uses the rug as a symbol for the Caucasian race and the footprints as blights on that race. Abner sees all the slaves as animals and cannot deal with being on the same level as them. His anger doubles when the slave acts as though Abner is beneath him and someone to be watched. Abner tries to push his prejudices on Sarty through guilt, saying his son should think only of the family.

Sarty starts to see how his father acts towards other people. He is seen as the child that is the closest to Abner in appearance, actions, and thoughts. But Sarty is at the age to ask questions and notice more than people believe. He begins to tell the truth at the courthouse but is quickly silenced by his father. After Sarty leaves his family, he walks through a forest, a dark place, and sees the light of dawn. Sarty walks under the "liquid sliver voices" of the forest animals and becomes baptized from the prejudices of his family into the beginning of a man who he wants to be and has seen from other people around him.

Abner's Fiery Desire for Power

Abner Snopes is a pivotal and dynamic character to the story “Barn Burning.” He is a poor sharecropper, unable to care for his family. He has no power in society and cannot even provide adequate meals for his family. Faulkner uses fire to not only represent Abner's lack of power, but also his inadequacy and his inability to care for his family. The Snopes family often goes hungry because Abner is unable to provide for them. While heading to the de Spain's residence, the family stops in the woods. Abner attempts to construct a fire. However, it is a small fire, unable to provide warmth for the family. This represents Abner's inability to help his family. He is unable to create a basic fire for warmth during the night, a symbol of his lacking personality and inability to provide for his loved ones.

Abner's poverty and status of servitude instills a deep feeling of inadequacy and a sense of being powerless. Abner must attempt to satiate this lack of power with destructive acts that put him into control. These acts are heartless acts of arson, meant to be a type of rebellion against those who are above Abner in society. Abner, throughout the course of the story, burns two barns. This is his way of trying to obtain power. No one is able to prevent him from committing arson and large chases are brought against him to capture Abner after the deed. When he successfully escapes, Abner develops a sense of control and power because the wealthy landowners are unable to stop his destruction. This satisfies Abner's feelings of inadequacy while also granting him a sense of control over his life and those around him.

Barn Burning;

Faulkner relies on the use of parallels to bring a contradiction of character versus arising action, illuminating the differences between Abner’s questionable personality and the liveliness of fire. From the beginning of the story, the cold and serious personality of Abner comes to light through the carelessness he shows for other people’s belongings and particularly the arson that he commits on a landowner’s barn. Unlike the fire Abner unleashes on those more “powerful” than he, he is tin-like and stiff and treats his family with borderline emotionless standards of authority and control. Compared to fire, which is ravaging and despite destructive, very vivid and bountiful with life despite its tendencies. For a man of such bitterness and calculative personality, using fire as an escape from the oppressing condescension of landowners shows an underlying layer of intensity between Abner and his habit of burning barns.

Through Sartoris, the reader is able to obtain the glimpses of further comparison.

Abner is impassive towards his daughters and shows only the slightest concern for Sarty when it comes to lying or protecting the family dignity - which according to Abner is the only thing that he should protect whether through lying or not.

Abner’s actions of wiping his feet on the expensive rug show his disdain for anyone that views themselves as his superior but also as a way to show himself wiping away his own problems onto those deem themselves higher than he. By burning down their barns he is able to establish a level ground between himself and whomever he is sharecropping with at the time and exposing the hostilities that Abner has towards those with more than himself.

Like clockwork.

Everything about this story has a repetitious almost rhythmic feel about it. When Sartoris begins to describe his father, he describes him as “harshly cut form tin”. This makes him seem more like a robot than like that of a man. Importantly, at the beginning of the story a clock is mentioned that is taken with them everywhere that they go even though it does not work. The story makes allusions to Abner being just like that clock. Several times Abner is described with the term cold; this is often used to describe someone that is emotionless, unforgiving, or lacking compassion. Abner is related to time itself in that situation, in the sense that he, like time, is unforgiving and uncompassionate. Abner’s hurt foot is like the clock’s inability to tick. Both of these are important wounds to their respective bearers. These wounds are representations of their owner’s inability to progress; the clock cannot move forward to tell time, while Abner’s foot is a symbol of his inability to run from his problems and his inability to move forward. The hurt foot is also a link to his past. As a confederate “soldier” he was shot in the heel after stealing a horse. With his hurt foot he cannot escape this past and will forever be unable to move on from the time before the end of the civil war. In the end his deficiency was the end of him, he was unable to adapt so he was decommissioned.

His deficiencies play into his hatred for the upper-class, as he cannot move forward and he sees them as enemies. He is stuck as a minute-hand on a clock, forever stuck in a past time amidst a time that no longer has a place for the likes of him.

Dirty Abner!

In this story, Abner is portrayed as an inhumane “object”. Descriptions, such as “ironlike”, “cut ruthlessly from tin”, “hand like a curled claw” help portray his physical appearances which classifies him as inhumane. These descriptions hint how harsh and odd Abner is when it comes to his life and family members. For example, Sarty, around 10 years old, is repeatedly smacked by his father, an act of harshness. The author also implies that he abuses his wife and other family members, and all of these implications help form the image of the inhumane father. Throughout the story, the actions he commits are ruthless, and emotionless. All of these ideas are tied in together by the author to establish him as a cruel, inhumane animal.

The author also makes use of diction to represent Abner as somewhat educated person who is willing to manipulate people for his own benefit. When he tells Sarty to “stick to your own blood”, the author portrays his selfishness and manipulative habits. Even though he has committed arson, he is warning his son to not spill his secrets. His diction also represents his heartless features. Just the way he speaks with his wife inspires fear into her heart and the other family members. No one dares to defy him because of the threat implied in his voice. Even though he responds in a cool and composed manner, his diction implies danger and harm.

A major symbol in this story is the destruction of property by Abner (barn burning and rug destruction). These actions symbolize Abner’s hatred for the class system that was basically established. Being a confederate, Abner firmly believed that he was worth more than a black person, and he wishes to establish that fact by causing harm to the rich class’s properties. Even though he is considered a slave, he establishes the fact that his mind and actions cannot be restrained and controlled. Thus, the destruction of their property is an act of rebellion to establish his authority and exercise his free will.

Barn Burning

William Faulkner uses arson to portray the internal conflict for control that Abner is experiencing throughout "Barn Burning." Abner burns the barns belonging to the more upper-class members of the society in which he lives; put into historical context, the upper-class is the landowners and the middle- to lower-class is the sharecroppers. The landowners generally treat the sharecroppers as though they were their slaves, and this seems to strike a nerve with Abner. For the most part, he burns their barns to prove a point--the point being that even though they control his body and his work, they do not control his free will. That is the same reason why the slaves would sing in the fields while they worked, to prove to their owners that they still had their free will despite being treated like their property.

Abner also burns barns because he wants to feel something for once. Though the story flows as though it is told from Sarty's point of view, the reader does get the impression that Abner uses physical abuse to keep his wife and children from doing things he does not want them to do. The language used in the telling of the story also indicates that Abner is generally a cold, unfeeling person around his family. Burning the barns of his oppressors might be the only way he can feel any sort of emotion, whether it is fear, joy, or the pure rush of adrenaline that comes from knowing he could get caught and killed for what he is doing. The one element that bears a striking contrast to Abner's lust for control is the fact that fire is so uncontrollable. Perhaps knowing that he is the creator of this fire is his way of asserting control.

-Sarah Meirose.

PS: Exactly 295 words = winning.