Barn Burning

Essay by alidiaUniversity, Master'sA+, May 2014

download word file, 2 pages 0.0

Sarty , a 10 year-old boy does not know to decide on loyalty to his father- Abner- a sharecropper, or firing the landowners' barns- his father's custom. He finds himself incapable of betraying to his father but eventually tries to hold back this event by divulging the imminent incident to Major de Spains . He abandons his family and even never looks back. The narrator's point of view is mostly limited to Sarty's mind; but sometimes by portraying the scenes not depicted through Sarty's view, it could be taken as omniscient point of view. For instance, at the end of the story when Sarty cries : " He was brave! He was! He was in the war!.. ", he does not know that his father had gone to that war not to defend the integrity, the flag or something, but just for booty.

The name of the story is " barn burning" and the story begins with the word " barn".

Denotatively " barn" is defined as a large farm building for "storing" crops and grain. As you know storing could be applied as " accumulating", accumulating of anything. Abner who intentionally and maliciously fires landowners' barns, he himself is a barn of accumulated complexes and problems which are not spoken of but we can see a kind of revenge of higher class in his abnormal and resentful deeds and behavior. When Abner, for the first time, wants to go to Major de Spain manor, intentionally puts his foot, پایی که گلوله خورده است , into the horse manure and enters the house and soils the rug. Here is the explosion of the accumulated resentments and sense of humiliation which he has had during his life. This is the same for Sarty, another kind of accumulation and...