Topic > Barn Burning - 775

Barn Burning"Barn Burning" is a sad story because it shows very clearly the classic struggle between the "privileged" and "underprivileged" classes. Time and time again, emotions of desperation emerge from both the protagonist and the antagonist involved in the story. This story outlines two distinct protagonists and two distinct antagonists. The first two are Colonel Sartoris Snopes ("Sarty") and his father Abner Snopes ("Ab"). Sarty is the protagonist surrounded by his father's antagonism while Ab is the protagonist antagonized by the social structure and the struggle that is imposed on him and his family. The economic situation of the main characters is poor, with no hope of improving their condition, and at the same time the mercy of a quasi-feudal system in North America during the late 1800s. Being a sharecropper, Ab and his family had to share half or two-thirds of the harvest with the landowner and with their share pay for the necessities of life. As a result of this status, Ab and his family know from the beginning what the future holds: hard work for the landlord and mere survival for them. No hope of advancement prevails throughout history. Sarty, his brother and twin sisters have no access to education, as they have to spend their time working in the fields or at home doing family tasks. No power "You could smell coffee from the room where they would soon be eating the cold food left over from the mid-afternoon meal". As a result, poor health combined with inadequate opportunities results in low morale. A moral that the writer identifies with the bourgeoisie of his time: "that same quality which in later years would cause his descendants to rev their engines earlier... than middle of paper... there!" " and "The boy didn't say anything. Enemy! Enemy! I think; for a moment he couldn't even see, couldn't see that the judge's face was kind." The emotional turns of the story are clearly defined by Sarty's thoughts and Ab's actions. Sarty's dilemma and Ab's frustrations capture continuously the reader, posing a series of emotionally charged dilemmas: given the circumstances of the story, is the burning of Ab's barn justified? Is the obsolete sociological “blame the victim” theory? Is the “loser-win” arrangement between sharecropper and landowner morally acceptable? Is burning a barn or any act of economic desperation in the form of vandalism absolutely uncondoned? However, the strange thing is that all these questions would not need to be asked if economic injustice were not prevalent.