"Barn Burning" is a short story by the American author William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

 which first appeared in Harper's in 1939 and has since been widely anthologized. The story deals with class conflict

Class conflict

Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....

s, the influence of fathers, and vengeance as viewed through the third-person perspective

Point of view (literature)

The narrative mode is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience. Narration, the process of presenting the narrative, occurs because of the narrative mode...

 of a young, impressionable child. It is a prequel

Prequel

A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

 to The Hamlet

The Hamlet

The Hamlet is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1940, about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi.-Plot introduction:...

, The Town

The Town (Faulkner)

The Town is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1957, about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi. It is the second of the "Snopes" trilogy, following The Hamlet and completed by The Mansion ....

, and The Mansion

The Mansion (book)

The Mansion is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, written in 1959. It is the last in a trilogy of books about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi, following The Hamlet and The Town...

, the three novels make up the Snopes trilogy

Snopes trilogy

The Snopes trilogy is a series of three novels written by William Faulkner regarding the Snopes family in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. It consists of The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion. It was begun in 1940 and completed in 1959....

.

Characters

• Colonel Sartoris Snopes ("Sarty") - protagonist
• Abner Snopes – patriarch of the Snopes family, Antagonist
• Lennie Snopes – wife of Abner and mother of Sarty
• Lizzie – unmarried sister of Lennie Snopes
• Major de Spain - Snopes's employer
• Mr. Harris - Abner's first mentioned landowner

Plot summary

Abner Snopes, the father of young "Sarty" Snopes, is being driven out of town after burning down his landlord's barn. In the court case that opens the story and in which Sarty is initially called to testify, no palpable proof can point to Abner as the culprit, but the Snopes family is ordered to leave the county. They move to a new place where Abner is to work as a sharecropper for Major de Spain, but Abner cannot seem to control his pyromania and hatred for society.

Shortly after arriving at his new position, Abner visits Major de Spain's house and tracks horse droppings on a blond rug. Major de Spain orders Abner to clean the rug, which he does by using a harsh lye soap, ruining the rug beyond repair, before throwing the rug onto Major de Spain's front porch. Major de Spain levies on Abner a fine of 20 bushels of corn against the price of the rug. At court, a Justice of the Peace reduces the fine to ten bushels of corn. Feeling once again wronged, Abner makes preparations to set fire to Major de Spain's barn. Sarty warns Major de Spain of his father's intentions to burn down his barn and then flees in the direction of his father. He is soon overtaken by Major de Spain on his horse and jumps into the ditch to get out of the way. Sarty hears three gun shots, but who gets shot is never revealed; the father and the brother appear in works set after "Barn Burning." Profoundly affected by his father's legacy, the boy does not return to his family but continues on with his life alone.

Screenplay

In 1980, the story was adapted into a short film of the same name by director Peter Werner

Peter Werner

Peter Werner is an American television and film director.In 1977, Werner won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for directing the short film In the Region of Ice.Since then he worked on primarily directing television amassing a number of television film credits namely Mama Flora's...

. It starred Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive....

as Abner Snopes, Shawn Whittington as Sartoris Snopes, and Faulkner's nephew as De Spain.