Barn Burning

"Barn Burning" is a short story by the American author William Faulkner, which appeared in "Harper's" in 1938. The story deals with class conflicts, the influence of fathers, and vengeance as viewed through the third-person perspective of a young, impressionable child. It is a prequel to "The Hamlet", "The Town", and "The Mansion". These three novels make up the "Snopes" trilogy.

Plot summary

The story opens with Abner Snopes, the father of young Sartoris Snopes, being driven out of town after burning down a neighboring farmer's barn. The neighbor was able to save his animals but not the barn. No palpable proof can point to Abner as the culprit, which allows him to evade the usually severe punishment for such a grave crime. The Snopes family is ordered to move along to begin life anew, but Abner Snopes cannot seem to control his pyromania and hatred for society. [He is portrayed as a man who, as it is put in older Southern times, does not abide by the law of the land.] Consequently, he moves to exact his revenge and assert his 'superiority' at the cost of his current landlord and aristocrat, Major de Spain. Sartoris, his son (often referred to as "the boy" or "Sarty"), loving his father yet also knowing his father's intentions, warns Major de Spain of his father's intentions to burn down his barn and flees out to continue the run to his father. When he hears the fast approach of the horse of "the white man," Sarty clears the way, of the dark road, for Major de Spain to continue on. At approximately the time the boy is unable to continue, the young Sartoris hears the sound of three gun shots perhaps indicating his father's murder and potentially that of his older brother, who indeed was his father's accomplice. [However, as Faulkner often does, he makes references to the characters in a later work, revealing that neither the father nor the brother were killed by the gunshots.] This deeply disturbs the boy. Profoundly affected by his father's legacy, the boy does not return to his family but rather continues on with his life alone.

In 1980, this story was adapted into a short film of the same name by director Peter Werner. It starred Tommy Lee Jones as Ab Snopes, and Shawn Whittington as Sartoris Snopes.