Journal Three- Barn Burning

The story, Barn Burning by William Faulkner, starts out with a man named Abner Snopes who is in court being accused of burning down Mr. Harris' barn. Snopes has a son named Colonel Sartoris Snopes, also known as Sarty. When the story opens it talks about how Sarty is scared probably because he knows what happens with Mr. Harris' barn and he is not wanting to testify in court. Sarty knows that he must protect his father and lie and tell the courtroom that his father did not burn down the barn. The judge ends up not questioning Sarty and ends the case by telling Snopes that he should "leave this country and don't come back to it" (187). After they leave the courthouse, the family is waiting for them in the wagon with their broken possessions. They ride for many miles and they stop at some kind of camp for the night. Snopes wakes up late that night and wakes up Sarty and tells Sarty to follow him. When he does Snopes starts accussing Sarty of getting ready to betray him in the courtroom and then hits him. When they return, Sarty's mother sees that he is hurt and tries to help him, but Sarty says "lemme be" (188). When Sarty's family arrives at the mansion that they have been traveling to, Snopes deliberatly steps in horse poop and walks right through the white carpet in the mansion. The owner of the mansion send the rug to him and says that he must clean it. Snopes makes his daughters to clean it, but it is not bood enough for the owner Mr. de Spain. Spain tells Snopes that he must pay off the rug by providing twenty extra bushels of corn.
Later, Snopes finds himself in the Justice of the Peace Courts where Snopes is trying to reduce the penalty of the extra twenty bushels of corn reduced for the rug. Sarty runs in the store and randomly blurts out that Snopes is not responsible for burning the barns and Snopes sends him out. The sentence is reduced to ten bushels of corn instead, but still finds Snopes guilty. Later that night, Sarty hears his mother trying to stop Snopes from doing something and he realizes that he is going to try and burn Spain's barn.
Sarty runs to tell Spain and when he gets there all he can say is "Barn!". They both run out and Sarty jumps in the nearby ditch and as he looks he hears three gunshots and a red glow near Spain's barn.
The end of the story is Sarty walking away, not turning back. The reader might assume that his father is dead because the story says nothing else about him. Sarty begins the story being scared and not knowing much of anything, but he ends the story no longer afraid.



Work Cited

Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. "Barn Burning." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. 186-98. Print.