Barn_Burning

Peter Werner’s Barn Burning Barn Burning written by William Faulkner, directed by Peter Werner, is a short story about a ten year old boy, Sarty Snopes, who is facing a conflict. Sarty’s father, Abner, is a barn burner and Sarty is divided as to whether he should let the law do its job or turn him in his self. Each time Abner walks away a free man, even though he is guilty. It is an injustice and Sarty wishes that he could stop his father, but on the other hand, he feels he should protect the family name. The struggle between Sarty and Abner conveys the film’s theme: one boy’s struggle for some form of identity and human dignity. Abner Snopes, Sarty’s father keeps on reminding him that family relations are very important and that “he was getting to be a man. He got to learn to stick to his own blood or he won’t have any blood to stick to him”. The film presents Sarty with two opposing choices. He can choose to side with his father because they are related by blood or choose to be loyal to the justice system in the community. Sarty knows very well that his father is a barn burner and he does not like the injustice, but his father keeps on drumming the fact that he has to take the side of his blood relatives. As he argued earlier, “blood is the only ones that will take your side no matter the circumstances.” After his father burns the barn the law gets involved for the first time. This is where we first see Sarty’s conflict come to life when he is asked the question by the judge “where was your father last night'” After the trail, another instance where he shows his allegiance to the loyalty of the family is when they leave the court room or store where court was held he gets in a fight with two boys because they ridicule him and his father, they call him a “barn burner.” Although it might be clear that he lived in ‘terror and fear’ of his father, he cannot just stand the soiling of both his father’s and his own name. The family then leaves the town on to the next. When confronted by his father, Sarty does not hide the fact that he had been planning to tell the truth when the judge asked him, and his father slaps him. At this point, we might be driven to think that his loyalty is imposed on him by his father. Sarty admits to us that “when he told me that they just wanted to get him because he had beat them, had I answered that what they wanted was simply justice and the truth, he would have hit me again.” So he preferred to keep quiet. Young Sarty is faced with such a difficult choice. He can either choose to side with his father pledging his allegiance to blood ties, or choose to be just and reject his father’s evil deeds. At their new home, their landlord is Major de Spain.  We see the way Abner starts manipulating the situation to make Sarty aware that he is watching him this time. The statement “the man that aims to begin to-morrow owning my body and soul for the next eight months” might just be an indication of the sorry life that he lives, such that he feels obligated to teach Sarty to always side with him in his endeavors. It could just be a way of saying that other people will always make him be under their control and either he plans to control his son in turn to be his slave as he finds strength in having at least someone who is obedient to him. He figures out that his father has potential to change but he is avoiding it. The horse droppings incidence tells it all. He deliberately steps on it so he can dirty Major de Spain’s rug. Not only does he wipe horse droppings on it, but when Major de Spain brings it to him to clean he scrubs it so hard with a rock that he rubs holes in it and ruins it. This is where we see Sarty change his loyalty. As he father burns Major de Spain’s barn, Sarty runs to let Major de Spain know. The last time we see Sarty he is walking into the woods as his family moves to another town. In conclusion, we see that the writer and film maker went a long way to bring out the theme of identity crisis. Creation of stereotypes was the tactic they found most appropriate to do so. They bundled one person with all the negative characters so that he could be a barrier for the main character to have a crisis.