The Burning of William Faulkner's Barn William Faulkner, recognized as one of the greatest writers of all time, once gave a speech accepting his Nobel Prize for Writing in which he said that great writing should contain the truths of the heart and the conflicts that arise over those truths. These truths were love, honor, mercy, pride, compassion and sacrifice. In truth, it would be difficult to argue that a story without these truths would be considered even a good story, much less a great story. The question asked, then, is whether Faulkner uses his own heart truths to tell his story “Barn Burning.” It is clear that the answer to this question is yes; his use of truths of the heart is prevalent throughout the story and to illustrate this to the reader we will focus on two of them, love and pride. There are many places throughout the story where love clearly conflicts with morality, kinship, and even other truths of the heart. The first of these, and probably the most dramatic, is found in the opening paragraphs of the story. A young boy named Sarty, who is the son of Abner Snopes, the barnburner of the story, is called to the stand to testify about his father's behavior. As the reader walks towards the booth, he is told what the boy is thinking and it is made very clear that he is fiercely aligned with his father or "blood relatives". As he approaches the podium, Sarty has many thoughts coming to his mind about the judge being the enemy "our enemy, he thought in this despair; ours! The mine and his both! He’s my father!” (Faulkner 161) It is clear that his father's love gets in the way of his moral thoughts because he is almost willing to lie for his father. However Sarty almost admits that...in the middle of paper......to get in he tells her to "get out of my way" (Faulkner 166) as he enters the house and stalks her horse manure. all over their very expensive carpet. Then, when the lady of the house told him to leave, he quickly obeyed her after turning on his heels to grind up even more feces. As he leaves, he once again makes a derogatory remark to the butler. This is probably where Abner's motivation becomes clearest. He doesn't feel superior to black people, in which case that meant everyone else around him was superior in some way and so he felt like every action they took was a threat to him and hurt his pride in himself, forcing him to fight back the only way he knew how. barns on fire.QuotesFaulkner, William. Barn on fire. Literature A portable anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. that of Martin, 2004. 161-175