Barn Burning : Familial Bonds And Ethical Choices Essay -- Family, Mot

In Barn Burning, a 10-year old Sartoris Snopes must choose between sticking to his family and making righteous decisions. His father, Abner Snopes, is a Southern tenant farmer who repeatedly burns down the barns of his landlords, so he and his family never stay in one place for too long. During the course of the story, Sartoris vacillates between loyalty to his father and loyalty to society. Ultimately, Sartoris betrays his father by warning the farm owner that his father will burn his barn, getting his father killed. In his short story Barn Burning, Faulkner uses the various characters and their development to elucidate that a familial bond is a substantial force that is difficult to separate from, but breaking the bond is sometimes crucial in order to do what is right. The different characters in the story facilitate in illustrating that family ties are an enormous force in a person’s life and difficult to break. Above all else, Abner believes that family has to stick together since they are all anyone has. Believing that his son was going to turn him in, Abner strikes his son, explaining, â€Å"‘You’re getting to be a man. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you. Do you think either of them, any man there this morning, would?† (408). Having spent his whole life running, Abner has no relationships with anyone outside his family and fears losing his son. It is clear that he is unable to trust anyone, in this case, not even his own son. However, he trusts his family more than anyone else in the world. Sartoris’s sympathetic mother, Lennie, shares Abner’s emphasis on family and is unable to leave Abner, despite greatly contrastin... ... middle of paper ... ...pair remain, he is no longer scared. Like his father had hoped for, Sartoris was becoming a man, just not in the way his father would have imagined. Despite Sartoris being alone at the end of the story, Sartoris made the right choice, and â€Å"did not look back† (417). Sartoris is now free to pursue justice, no longer burdened by his family. Despite the difficulties one must face in order to break family ties, it is sometimes essential to preserve one’s integrity. Full of grief and despair, Sartoris transitions from being a slave to his father’s atrocities to being a virtuous citizen. Principled like his mother, yet determined like his father, Sartoris accomplishes what none of his siblings were able to do: Sartoris escapes his father’s forceful grasp to regain his integrity as a human being. Sartoris liberates himself from the cycle of crime his family imposed on him.