William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" An Analytical Writing

An Analytical Writing of William Faulkner's "Barn Burning"

There are many ways to approach William's short story in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Edition. Pages four hundred and ninety two through five hundred and five. You can look at this story from a critical approach. You can debate on what kind of character Colonel Sartoris Snopes, (Sarty) for short, may be? There are several ironies in this story also. All in an analytical writes of "Barn Burning".

William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portable si...

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Gen. Abner Doubleday, U.S.A.

From a critical approach "Barn Burning" is a sad story because it is very clearly shows the classical struggle between the "privileged" and the "underprivileged" classes. Time after time emotions of despair surface from both the protagonist and the antagonist involved in the story. This story outlines two distinct protagonists and two distinct antagonists. The first two are Colonel Sartoris Snopes and his father Abner Snopes. Sarty is the protagonist surrounded by his father's antagonism where as Abner is the protagonist antagonized by the social structure and the struggle that is imposed on him and his family. The economic status of the main characters, serving up a series of emotional dilemmas: Is Abner's barn burning justified? Should Sarty tell the landlord that Abner was responsible for burning down the barn? Is the win-lose arrangement between sharecropper and landowner a morally acceptable one? Burning a barn or any act of economic despair in the form of vandalism is definitely not condoned. However the strange thing is all of these questions need not be asked, if the economic injustice was not prevalent.

Sarty exhibits many interesting traits. The majority of the characters are seen through his thoughts the author includes periodically throughout the story. The thoughts in the readings might cause one to come to the...