Barn Burning

As Abner Snopes, in “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner, sets fire to barns, he must feel as if he is making a mark in his fleeting circumstances. He must feel for one instance freed from the life of the sharecropper farmer he has become. Weary of moving from land to land, farm to farm, never owning a plot or part. He has become envious of those that have made their fortunes on the backs of migrant farmers like him. He has been serving the post civil war farm owners with meager benefit or future for his own family. Abner feels the only way to have control in this life is in the way he has learned to master the destructive power of fire.

Abner shows complete control over his life by controlling those around him. He brings his own sense of justice to a situation by setting fires.

When Abner sets the smaller “nigger” fires he is showing great control. He only allows the fire to be as big as they need it to be to provide a meal or a little heat. He uses this same control to display the stingy displays of affection to his family. Measuring out each piece of wood as needed, in a quantity only sufficient enough to keep the fire going so it won’t die. This is the same measure of relation he shows to each of his family members. With Sarty he offers love like the kindling for the fire. He shows a complete disregard for his feelings of others. He challenges the authority around him.

Desolation.

"something cut ruthlessly from tin" 

"not dwarfed by the [white] house” suggesting he sees himself as a man to be feared.

In the end after DeSpain’s shots are fired, Sarty sees the new day dawn. He watches as the night falls away and the morning comes “soon there will be the sun” (?) This dawn and new day signify the dying of the dark times for him and his family.

Fire is a constant threat in “Barn Burning,” and it represents both Snopes’s inherent powerlessness and his quest for power and self-expression. After the family has been run out of town because...