Barn Burning

In “Barn Burning,” Sartoris is torn between loyalty to his father and his own sense of morality. Sartoris struggles to reconcile his love and admiration for his father with his father’s reprehensible actions. On the surface, Sartoris believes that his father’s actions are morally wrong and dangerous. However, shifts in point of view and tone also reveal that, over time, Sartoris comes to realize that his image of his father is flawed. The key conflict in the story, and the conflict at the core of Sartoris’s character, is the “fierce pull” of loyalty that he feels for his father, despite all the bad his father does. The narrator says,

The old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which had run for so long (and who knew where, battening on what of outrage and savagery and lust) before it came to him. I could keep on, he thought. I could run on and on and never look back, never need to see his face again. Only I can’t. I can’t (15).

Faulkner explores how far loyalty extends in times of stress. Sartoris represents the struggle between loyalty—to family, friends, causes, and community—and moral rightness.