Literary Analysis Of William Faulkner's Barn Burning

At the conclusion of his short story “Barn Burning,” William Faulkner strongly implies that Abner Snopes burns yet another barn, although whether he does or not is never made absolutely clear. In any case, his young son, Sarty, has run to warn the owner of the barn, Major De Spain, about his father’s intentions:

"De Spain!" he cried, panted [to De Spain’s black servant]. "Where 's…" then he saw the white man too emerging from a white door down the hall. "Barn!" he cried. "Barn!"

"What?" the white man said. "Barn?"

"Yes!" the boy cried. "Barn!"

Later, after De Spain gallops off in the direction of the barn, Sarty hears gun shots in the distance, but again Faulkner leaves unclear who fired the shots and whether anyone was injured or killed.

• By leaving some crucial details ambiguous, Faulkner adds to the over-all ambiguity of the story. He tantalizes his readers, makes them think for themselves, and thus makes them active readers of the story rather than merely passive recipients of information

• Whatever happened about the barn and with the major, Sarty realizes that he can never return to his father:

He went on down the hill, toward the dark woods within which the liquid silver voices of the birds called unceasing - the rapid and urgent beating of the urgent and quiring heart of the late spring night. He did not look

I think it is clear that the grimly serious nature of the tale, and in particular, the kind of existence that Sarty has. Because of his father 's penchant for barn burning and his clear resistance or conflict with any form of authority, he finds himself cut off from society and isolated. In addition, he has to constantly struggle with his own sense of right and wrong, and whether to disobey his father by revealing his guilt. This is of course what he nearly does at the beginning of the story, and his father realises this, and beats him for it. However, by the end of the story, this is what he decides to do, and we are left with a moving image of Sarty looking up at the constellations above him and then walking away from his father and family, without looking