Barn Burning Sarty

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Recommended: Critical analysis of barn burning by William Faulkner

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they must break away from their family and make their own decisions. William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” is a story about the main character Sarty’s emancipation, or his rite of passage to manhood. The author uses specific passages in the story to describe Sarty’s progressive move towards emancipation and his greater desire for justice which motivates him to break away from his family. Though at the end Sarty loses his father and leaves his family for good, there is hope that his release will lead to something positive due to the new outlook he has on life. The opening scene of the story is Sarty’s father standing before the Justice of the Peace’s court, he is being accused of burning down a barn. It However, Sarty’s father is up to his old habits once more, he calls for the can of oil and commands Sarty to bring it to him. Having no other choice, Sarty runs “towards the stable: this the old habit, the old blood which had been bequeathed him… which had run for so long…” Before he realizes, “I could keep on… I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see his face again. Only I can’t. I can’t” (48). Sarty is stuck in the same predicament as he was in the first scene, he knows the evil nature of his father and what he intends to do with the can of oil. This time however, he realizes that he has a choice to run and not follow his father’s orders, and for the first time finds himself questioning his loyalty to his family. Sarty’s father realizes this as well and makes Lennie, Sarty’s mother hold him down while he goes off to burn Major de Spain’s barn. At this point however, Sarty has made his decision, choosing justice over family ties, and managing to escape his mother’s grasp, runs as fast as he can to warn the Major. Able to warn the Major in time he runs in the direction of his father ““knowing it was too late yet still running even after he heard the shot…pausing now without knowing he had ceased to run, crying “Pap! Pap!” running on among the invisible trees, panting, sobbing, “father! Father!”” (51) Sarty calls his father “pap,” a more specific name which shows closeness, yet by the end he refers to him as father, a more general term which symbolizes his breaking away from the “the old fierce pull of blood”

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