Barn Burning

“Blood is thicker than water.” This phrase has been said many times by many people, but in William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” it is put to the test. Colonel Sartoris Snopes, known as Sarty, is a young boy in conflict over his “old fierce pull of blood” to his father and what he knows to be truthful and honest. Sarty is the son of Abner Snopes, a sharecropper who time after time finds himself in …

…is a dynamic character growing from a scared boy afraid of his father to a young man with extreme courage willing to break from his father to do what he knows is morally right. At last, Sarty gained the courage and strength to break free from the “old fierce pull of blood” and prove that blood is not always thicker than water. It is at this point we see that Sarty has come of age.