Barn Burning A father figure is commonly known for his compassion and wishes to have the best for his family’s interest. However, this is not what happens in “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner. Faulkner’s character Abner Snopes in “Barn Burning” demonstrates how society can tolerate the “blaming the world for one’s wrong actions.” Abner Snopes commits crimes usually with fire in order to cause damage against his employers, he works for in a cruel game of complete lack of respect. In the story Barn Burning, Abner Snopes is a very complex and interesting character. The story focuses on the shock of Abner’s behavior towards his ten-year-old son, Sartoris.
Kimberly Adams Essay #2 Barn Burning “Barn Burning” takes place in the post-Civil War where a man’s place in society is decided by his actions during the war. Ab Snopse, a man who served both the North and the South, is plagued with his non-allegiance ways to benefit himself and failure to accept authority. When Ab comes into conflict with his employer, he finds himself taking control from the authority figure, and reverting back to his mercenary ways. Having no allegiance, Ab makes the move from helping hand to the enemy by burning down barns. Being charged for burning the barn, he deserves leniency.
He feels guilty because he watched his friend get raped and he was too cowardly to intervene. A comparison I made to this was from the novel Night by Elie Wiesel. The narrator in that novel is going through a struggle as well. His internal conflict is whether or not he should help his father or if it should be “every man for his self”. In Night Elie Wiesel and his father are in a concentration camp.
"I gave him enough wire to patch up his pen" (226, 3). Sartoris father was now on trial, and as Sartoris watches, he feared for the family and his father, not for himself. And he feels grief and despair "the smell and sense just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief" (226, 1). The author uses the term despair a number of times. This denotes hopelessness, and shows us that Sartoris sees that there is nothing he can do about the situation.
These thematic concerns are echoed in the related texts therefore linking the texts and reflecting how texts may represent society. Fear is a fundamental theme throughout the text 'The Story of Tom Brennan'. Fear becomes an obstacle for tom to move into the world, he feels unsure and paranoid of what his class mates have heard about him and his family. 'the old man told me that night that Harvey knew about the accident and Daniel and stuff. I didn't feel comfortable about it" this conveys the message that tom is both afraid and uncertain of where his new life may take him.
Comparison and Contrast: Barn Burning Sartoris Snopes is a young boy with a major conflict in his life; “be true to his blood”? or tell the truth. His father, a shady character with very cruel intentions has had to relocate his family because he is a “barn burner”. After one of Sarty’s fathers pigs gets loose for the second time, one of his neighbors tells him he can have it back for a dollar fee which angers the father so much that he burns down the neighbors’ barn. So Sarty’s father is asked to appear before the Justice of the Peace to settle the matter.
Nevertheless, he is not as fine as Lyman thought. Even though his brother did his best to help him, Henry could not accept the new awful things he was going trough, therefore he took his own life. Watching someone you love suffering is heart wrenching, especially when nothing can be done to help the situation. Erdrich looks at the trauma of a soldier returning home from war and how their family must cope with his emotional change. The effects of war not only affect the soldier, but also cause an effect on families and loved ones.
"Barn Burning" -- Faulkner This story by William Faulkner is set in the post Civil War South among a family of sharecroppers who are forced to take up new residence regularly when the actions of the family patriarch force them to move on often. The main character is named Colonel Sartoris Snopes, or Sarty, and though the story is narrated by an uninvolved narrator, we see much of what happens through Sarty's eyes. His father is a man who feels cheated by the world. He has seen his condition in the world deteriorate since the war. He recognizes the class structure of his society and recognizes that before the war he was not on the lowest rung of the social ladder; despite his rugged life of that time, he could always claim to be superior to
Fences in Fences August Wilson's Fences is about Troy Maxon, an aggressive family head who struggles to keep a successful relationship with his family and friends. Fences are used to either keep things and people out or in. Troy Maxon built many personal fences and committed many actions to do just that. He has spent the later part of his life trying to support his family and make sure that he fulfills his responsibility as the man of the house, a far cry from what he had in his own abusive childhood. All of the obstacles he faced in his past life severely impact the way he handles relationships and situations in the present.
How does Swindells build sympathy for Link? I think Robert Swindells tries to make us feel sorry, sympathise and empathise for the character Link by making him, who is in this horrible and terrible situation of ending up on the streets and ending up homeless because of his mother’s new and brutish boyfriend in his home, which we wouldn’t be able to bear, cope or even manage with in life. I am going to be writing the points, evidences and explanations (PEE) about how Robert Swindells makes us feels sorry for Link and my personal opinions on how I think Link feels and why and also using good quotes to support my answers. First of all, one of the ways which Robert Swindells portrays Link as a character which we can feel sympathy for is by having him talking directly to the 2nd person. One example of a quote is “You should see what a state Vince gets into.” He also often uses rhetorical questions for example, the use of the quote “Good ‘eh?” This allows us to be drawn into his way of thinking and we can try to understand and everything he is going through.