Essay --

The Strategies of VictimsFaulkners short story Barn Burning, captures the intensity and kinetics of a father and son relationship. The story is set in the old South, where the dry farming grounds of the plantations are the only places that promise up-and-coming men a means to support their families. Though Faulkner presents these two macrocosm characters as vastly variant, the father, Abner, and the son, Sarty, share a striking similarity. They both attend to themselves as victims and display the traits of a victims status. The father is a victim of social injustice and poverty. The son, on the other hand, is a victim of child abuse at the hand of his controlling and impulsive father. Faulkner sets the bill of the story by displaying the strategies of the victims and the complexity of their abuse with the cashiers voice.In Barn Burning, Faulkner portrays a boy, very nearly moralistic awareness, who ends up cut off from the modern world of which he is beginning to understa nd. The boy, Sarty begins to determine his alienation take root in connection with his father, who ought to be his moral compass and lead Sarty into this new modern society. On account of his fathers guilty impulsiveness and a knack for starting fires, Sarty ends up, in the beginning of the story secondhand and insulted by a kid, who he attacks back. His father has taught him to see others as the competitor (X.J. Kennedy). When Sartys father is charged with arson by Mr. Harris, he so labels him as our enemy . . . hisn and ourn (X.J. Kennedy pg. 147). The story closes with Sarty alone on at nighttime on a hill viewing the stars. Faulkner depicts the Sartys loneliness, learned through his years of abuse and neglect. Yet on this hill, he has a result of clarity and... ...nd a source and cause for his familys poverty, and unhappiness. Abner is in self-abnegation that his circumstances are mostly a direct result of his decisions. Instead, he hates society and the educated man. Th erefore, Abner directs his anger towards them, fighting to regain his pride and musical theme of justice. Through the support of the narrators tone, these two diversely different characters are brought together because they go through the same strategies and expressions of pain, unhappiness, injustice and abuse. Faulkners brilliant writing style and tone through the voice of the narrator creates a dynamic story that discusses several critical points, such as the struggles of victims and their strategies. Through two characters the author was able to describe the different reactions of victims, as well as, allow the audience to form and label the antagonist and protagonist.