Faulkner's "Barn Burning"

I found this story interesting, especially the ending, where Faulkner leaves it up to your imagination as to what happened. "Barn Burning" starts out in a court room where Colonel Sartoris Snopes who goes by Sarty is called to answer questions about the barn burning his father allegedly committed. By the tone Sartoris uses you can tell there is conflict between him and his father. His father seems as if he is a very mean and controlling man with severe anger problems. The Justice found his father not guilty of the barn burning because no one had proof but advises him to “leave this country and don’t come back to it”.

The family packs up and heads out of town, where they finally wind up at M. & Mrs. De Spain’s homestead. The father goes inside the house without much regard for other people or things, this is where Faulkner gives the reader a glance at what the father feels and why he has so much anger. Sarty’s Father comes out of the house and says “Pretty and white, ain’t it?...That’s Nigger sweat. Maybe it ain’t white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat with it.” It seems as if the father feels like he is being treated with the same respect black people got, which was not much during this story’s setting. He has anger at the people he has to work for and feels like he is being treated as a black person.

There are several more conflicts between Sarty’s father and the land owners, before Sarty’s father decides he is going to burn their barn. This does not take well with Sarty and he decides he needs to go tell the De Spain’s. Sarty runs down the road but hears gunshots and says “Father. My Father. He was brave…”. It seems to me that his father along with his brother (who was helping with the fire) were killed, although Faulkner never gives any clear detail about this. I’m sure this was a sad moment for the boy but also it seems as though he would be relieved because he would no longer have to hear from his father that “You’re going to be a man. You got to learn. You got to lean to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you.” Sarty would now be free to do the right thing.