Barn Burning Sarty Character Analysis

Children forced to make adult decisions is a major theme in Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron,” and William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning.” Sylvia and Sarty are the children in their respective stories, and they behave accordingly. However, when forced to make a choice, both are faced with a fork in the road. On one side of the fork is the path towards family happiness, and minimal repercussion upon themselves; the other path is that of the righteous, the good, and the caring. Children are not usually faced with such a decision, and these two are specifically conflicted because of what the other side offers. Both of these choices are used as a turning point in their characters’ lives, for their choices will not only effect this outcome, but how
The little boy, Sarty, is faced with much conflict about his family. His father is a barn burner, and as the name would imply, the story centralizes around this act. Sarty is the younger son of his father, and the story opens with a civil trial between Sarty’s father, Mr. Snopes, and the barn owner, Mr. Harris. They began to question little Sarty, he didn’t answer, save for his name. They decided not to continue the questioning, and to just let him go. The judge released the case claiming that there wasn’t enough evidence against Snopes, the boy’s father, to actually continue with a trial. Nonetheless, the judge recommended that it would be in his best interest if he left town, and never came back. They do, in fact, leave for another location as the judge requested. The family settles into the de Spain mansion, doing work for them. They are only there for four days before Snopes decides that he is going to return to the activities that caused his family to move in the first place. The young boy has been bullied, beaten down, and treated as a punching bag his entire life by his father. Yet his father still has the audacity to speak of things such as family honor. The young boy is being restrained by his mother while his father heads off to the barn. In this entire family the aunt is the only other relative who sees that this situation will only
What choice should the main characters be making logically, as well as emotionally, is dictated by their perspective. Both characters, Sylvia and Sarty, are put into a situation that puts their own personal feelings of what is right and wrong against what is right and wrong for their own family. The nature of their decisions is also important because of how vastly different their lives at home are. Sarty is faced with a much more grave situation than Sylvia is. Sarty’s family life involves the choice between what is very obviously the morally right thing to do along with the emotionally crippling loss of his family, or being “protected” by said criminal father who abuses him. The way that Sarty makes his choice to betray his father is ultimately his father’s own fault for the way he was raising his child, along with the criminal acts he was forcing Sarty to be a part of. Sylvia, on the other hand, has a much different time with choosing what should happen. Her home life isn’t nearly as toxic, and she is influenced by her infatuation with a young hunter. She feels that the money given to her and her grandmother in exchange for the white heron’s location is most definitely needed, and she even goes looking for the nest. Once she finds it, however, she is awe-struck and cannot bring herself to betray such a beautiful creature. Even though she and her grandmother would’ve benefited greatly from the