Summary:
In the short story "Barn Burning," the protagonist, Sarty Snopes has a very conflicted relationship with his father. Sarty is still a young boy of only ten years, but he is heavily under his father's influence. His father forces him to do and think the way he does.
In the short story "Barn Burning," the protagonist, Sarty Snopes has a very conflicted relationship with his father. Sarty is still a young boy of only ten years, but he is heavily under his father's influence. His father forces him to do and think the way he does. He not only forces, but also threatens as is evident when his father says, "You're getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you." His father says this in a way that will make Sarty feel threatened, but also guilty if he ever does go against his father's wishes.
In the beginning of the story, Sarty is being examined in a case in which his father has been accused of burning a man's barn. Sarty thinks, "He aims for me to lie..... And I will have to do hit." This thought reveals that Sarty may have done this exact thing before and also foreshadows the father's abusive nature. His abusive nature is confirmed when they leave the courtroom and he hits Sarty and accuses him of almost telling the court that he did, in fact, burn the man's barn down. This, again, illustrates how he threatens his son. Sarty knows that if he strays from his father's desires, he will get punished for it later.
Sarty is also convinced that his father is a war hero because he took a bullet in the ankle, when the reader really finds out later that his father's military career was nothing more than for booty. In a way, it seems that Sarty wants to believe that his father is a good man and a hero because it might make it easier for him to do what his father tells him to do even if he does not agree with it. It seems this way because Sarty often reminds himself of this fact as if he is trying to convince himself that it meant his father was someone special.
If Sarty lived under his father forever, he probably would have turned out to be the same man that his father is. The rest of his family seems to be living around everything that he says. There is never a time in the story that any other family member disobeys or questions him. Since Sarty is the youngest, he has not been around long enough to be completely hypnotized by his father. He is on the verge of it, but it is obvious that he is not yet under his father's complete control yet because he is still questioning his father's judgments and actions.
Then, at the end of the story, Sarty completely rebels against his father by warning Major de Spain that his father is going to set his barn ablaze. To top that off, Sarty leaves his entire family behind which is stated in the last sentence: "He never looks back."
Based on Sarty's actions and reactions, it seems clear that he will not end up like his father. When he rebels against him and leave his family, it shows that he does not want to end up like him. He had the power to choose who he wanted to be and he did not choose to stay with his family. It does not seem like he would have left all of that, if he was just going to go on and be just like his father. The statement, "he never looks back," also suggests that he never even thought back to his old life or his family's lifestyle ultimately revealing that he lived his own life the way he saw fit.
This is the complete article, containing 616 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
