The short story “Barn Burning”, by William Faulkner is honestly a brilliantly worded and well-written story about a physically and emotionally abuse father who may be extremely crazy. There may be some spoilers in this review, but honestly, I’d recommend to go online and read a PDF file of it real quick and come back, it’s great.
So, first off, the book takes place in early 1900s, maybe 1890s, in the American South. The people there are still extremely racist, many are poor, and hard working. The main character is Sarty and the story is written in third person, but kind of told by Sarty twenty years from now. The story starts off with his father, Abner, in court because he is accused of burning somebody’s barn, which is pretty illegal. William Faulkner makes the beginning extremely easy to read and understand, but he also makes it extremely interesting and tense, making the reader wonder the entire time of what was going to happen. Sarty is then called to the stand to actually testify against his own father, Faulkner adds this conflict in brilliantly, bringing this up later to prove that Abner is physically abusive and paranoid that his own son won’t even help him.
Abner is then told to leave the city they were in, so they move for the twelfth time. Faulkner does a great job in this story of adding great information at the right time, and he gives us just enough so we could understand everything. He also establishes that Abner was in the war, he does this while they were moving from the city they just lived in, so Faulkner would not waste any time by doing this portion another time, it also gives a great transition to the next portion of the story.
They then go to Abner’s new bosse’s house. Abner steps in horse poop and kind of purposely rub his poopy shoe on a one-hundred dollar rug from France. His boss brings the rug to be cleaned to Abner, and Abner ruins it after being told by his wife to not put lye on it and rub it violently with a stone, which is what he did. His boss then tells him that he will pay him back for the rug, not with money, but with corn. Abner goes to court to get rid of the charge, but the charge is instead cut in half.
Abner does what any normal person would do, he goes home and prepares kerosene and oil to burn his bosse’s barn down. Sarty wants to stop him, but his father then commands Sarty’s mom to hold him down, or she would probably get beat, so she holds him down. Sarty escapes and tries to warn the boss, but the barn is already being burned down. The boss the gets a gun and shoots Abner. Sarty then ponders his father’s life and states that he respected him.
I recommend this story to anybody who is willing to embrace a wonderful story that showcases a father who is extremely abusive, narcissistic, impulsive liar, and might be insane. This story shows that even though you may be abused, you can still love that person, because in the end, Abner did try his best to protect his family.
