Comparing Loyalty In 'Barn Burning And' A White Heron

Honesty and maturity can go hand in hand. The same can be said for loyalty and maturity. And yet, sometimes loyalty and honesty do not. At times you must abandon loyalty for honesty if being loyal would lead you astray, and at other times you may need to abandon honesty for loyalty if being honest would lead to harm. In “Barn Burning”, by William Faulkner, Colonel Sartoris “Sarty” Snopes is ultimately driven to honesty, in the process betraying his loyalty to his father, while in “A White Heron”, by Sarah Orne Jewett, Sylvia, at first enamored by the young man who has suddenly come into her life, remains loyal to her life and ideals by choosing to lie.
In “Barn Burning”, Sarty is depicted as being loyal to his father Abner, to the extent

that, initially in the story, it overrides his sense of right and wrong. A brief glimpse of this is seen at the beginning of the story when his father is on trial for burning Mr. Harris’s barn. When called to testify, we get a glimpse into Sarty’s mind, as he, in “frantic grief and despair”, thinks that his father “aims for [him] to lie”, and that he “will have to do hit [sic]” (Faulkner 308). Conversely, in “A White Heron”, Sylvia is temporarily enticed to betray her loyalty to nature by the young man in fulfilling his search for the white heron (“What fancied triumph … when she could make known the secret!”), despite her better judgment concerning the man’s intent, as demonstrated by her “not understand[ing] why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much” (Jewett 55-56).
Sarty’s loyalty to his father is reinforced as the story goes on. His father acts as a mentor of sorts, teaching Sarty things like that he “got to learn to stick to [his] own blood, or [he] ain’t going to have any blood to stick to [him]” (Faulkner 311). Yet at the same time, it is strained, Sarty feeling “terror and grief” towards his father’s actions, and as if he were “being pulled two ways like between two teams of horses” (Faulkner 319).
Conversely, as time goes on Sylvia’s loyalties shift and are tested. She is initially unsure of the young man, describing him as “the enemy” (Jewett 52). However as the story goes on, “having lost her first fear of the friendly lad”, she becomes enamored with him, “the woman’s heart, asleep in the child” being “vaguely thrilled by a dream of love” (Jewett 55). Similar to Sarty and his father, the young man also takes on a sort of mentor-like role for Sylvia, “[telling] her many things about the birds and what they knew and where they lived and what they did with themselves” (Jewett 55).
As time goes on, both Sarty and Sylvia are shown examples of what they perceive as “wrongs” by their respective mentors. Sarty’s father, in a show of defiance against Major de Spain (“I reckon I’ll have a word with the man that aims to begin tomorrow owning me body and soul for the next eight months”), steps “in a pile of fresh droppings … which his father could have avoided by a simple change of stride” and then deliberately soils de Spain’s rug, ultimately “pivot[ing] on [his] good leg”, Sarty seeing “the stiff foot drag[ging] round the arc of the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear” (Faulkner 312-315). Similarly, albeit not as outright antagonistic or immoral by common standards, the young man “brought down … unsuspecting singing creature[s]”, Sylvia thinking that she “would have liked him vastly better without his gun” (Jewett 55). Neither Sarty nor Sylvia vocally objected to the behavior.
In both the case of Sarty and that of Sylvia, initially they condone their mentors’ behaviors, even providing aid for them. Sarty, while not having had the chance to do so, was going to lie in court about his father’s burning of Mr. Harris’s barn, and was so possessed by this intent to defend his father, that when he was next in a courthouse, even though the barn burning was not relevant at the time, it was all Sarty could think of, leading him to cry out that “he ain’t done it! He ain’t burnt . . .” before being told to leave by his father (Faulkner 319). Similarly, Sylvia was enraptured by the young man, to the extent that she felt “terrified” of the thought of “the sound of her own unquestioned voice”, and found it “hard enough to answer yes or no when there was need of that”, as well as “griev[ing] because the longed-for white heron was elusive” (Jewett 55). While she “did not lead the guest” in his search for the heron, she mounted a search of her own, “[stealing] out of the house” when “she was afraid the morning would after all come too soon” to climb the old pine tree in the woods, “for why, if one climbed it at break of day, could not one see all the world, and easily discover whence the white heron flew, and mark the place, and find the hidden nest?” (Jewett 55-56).
In the end however, something happens to convince Sarty and Sylvia to turn against their mentors.

Sarty is driven to betray his loyalty to his father when his father chooses to burn Major de Spain’s barn in revenge for demanding payment from him for damaging his rug. The breaking point comes when Sarty confronts his father about not sending warning like he did with Mr. Harris, crying out “ain’t you going to even send a nigger? . . . At least you sent a nigger before!” (Faulkner 322). Sarty runs off for the de Spain mansion, “burst[ing] in, sobbing for breath, incapable for the moment of speech” (Faulkner 324). Ultimately, the most he can get out is the word “Barn!” (Faulkner 324). Then, a short time later, “he heard [a] shot, and, an instant later, two shots” as de Spain presumably encountered his father attempting to burn the barn (Faulkner 324). Sarty grieves, stating that his father “was brave” and that “He was in the war!”, before ultimately abandoning the world and family he knew, walking “toward the dark woods within which the liquid silver voices of the birds called unceasing . . . He did not look back” (Faulkner 325). Conversely, the moment of epiphany for Sylvia is not shown in the story itself, but instead implied. She climbs down the tree fully intending to tell the young man of her discovery, “wondering … what the stranger would say to her … when she told him how to find … the heron’s nest” (Jewett 58). However, once she makes her way back home, she “does not speak after all”, feeling that “she must keep silence!” (Jewett 58). Ultimately, despite the promise of money (“He can make them rich with money, he has promised it”), despite her being enamored with the man, despite “the great world for the first time put[ting] out a hand to her”, she instead stays loyal to nature, “thrust[ing] it aside for a bird’s sake” (Jewett

58).
In the end, both Sarty and Sylvia make choices that, while hard, to them are morally preferable and arguably more mature. Sarty chooses honesty over loyalty, justice and righteousness over family and blood, while Sylvia chooses loyalty over honesty, choosing the world she’s come to love over the enticing hand of the young man. While loyalty and honesty can both be moral and mature paths to take, they aren’t necessarily so, and one does not always go with the other.