Barn Burning Barn Burning is a short story written by William Faulkner, and it was published in 1939. In this story, the main character is a small boy at the age of ten years old. The story is written mostly about his life at that time and the decisions he is having to choose to make. The young man had to choose whether he should pick to do what is right or to lie for his father is what this short story is about. He has to choose blood relatives or what he knows may get him in trouble, but is actually the right decision. The story starts out in the courtroom and it speaks about how the court ?smells of cheese? and how the young boy has a bitter outlook at what is going on between his father and this ?enemy? of theirs. …show more content…
The home was built by slaves. They are going to be working for people. The family decided as an occupation, they were going to become tenant farmers. Sartoris and his father go to see the owner of the house and their new boss. There is a very nice house compared to their shack they will be living in, it is basically a mansion. Sartoris sees the mansion house as a good sign that everything will be just fine. He is not scared of his father hurting this type of person and burning their barn to the ground because these people are well off. Snopes purposefully walks in horse manure and walks all over a rug in the nice house, it happens to be the color white as well. Mr. de Spain is the owner of the fine house they are in. Snopes has his two daughters try to clean the rug with lye. Snopes has to take Sartoris with him to return the rug cleaned by two sisters. The owner is mean and says that the rug is ruined because of the way they cleaned it so the rug is sent back due to being messed up because they did not clean the rug properly. The rug costed 100 dollars too, so he had to pay a good amount of corn (about twenty bushels) to be able to pay for the rug he ruined on purpose. Snopes was charged for this incident, and they refused to pay the cost to them because they did not think they did anything wrong, and they thought they did everything in their power to make sure it was as clean as possible. Sartoris tried to stick up for his father this time but he was shot down by Snopes and told to leave. He was told to go back to the wagon, but he instead stayed in the store to watch as everything went down. There is then a court appearance again, and the judge thinks that the rug was burned as well as accidentally messed up and snopes emptied kerosine and had a lit candle. The judge decided that Snopes was responsible for the rug. Sartoris? mother is speaking to his dad about not doing something and he is going to do it anyways. Snopes