You Don't Want to Make Me Angry...

I was really struck by the character Abner Snopes in Faulkner’s “Barn Burning.” There was something about him that made me think he wasn’t an altogether bad guy even though he hits his son, shoves his wife, and apparently is a serial arsonist, which makes me wonder if that would have made him the first serial arsonist in American history. Alas, that is to be pondered in depth some other time. Faulkner spends a lot of time vaguely describing Abner, his son, and their relationship making him a mysterious and interesting character to analyze.

Abner Snopes is a poor white man aka po’ white trash in what appears to be post-civil war/emancipation South. He is a sharecropper who, when the story begins, is accused of, but not convicted of, burning someone’s barn. We find out that his son is illiterate and hungry, and his twin daughters look malnourished and are wearing cheap, ratty clothing. This guy is obviously not Dad of the year. I did not, however, hate him like I did Minnie in “Dry September.” I sort of felt sorry for him, and I think this is intentional on Faulkner’s part, because his own descriptions of Abner are contradictory. Physically, Abner is “wiry” and “stiff”, and is usually accompanied with a description of his black coat. His son “followed the stiff black coat, the wiry figure walking a little stiffly…”.(162) I interpret this as representing that sharecropping has replaced slaves in the South thus making sharecroppers, white and black, basically slaves. Post civil war the poor white class now overlapped with blacks, and Abner is dangerously jealous and angry that he is basically black. When they get to the new house, he remarks that it is “’Pretty and white, ain’t it?.’ he said. ‘That’s sweat. Nigger sweat. Maybe it ain’t white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat with it.’”(167) Abner is aware of his status but doesn’t really have any alternatives, but he can’t really take it. In a particularly self-destructive moment, right after the above quote, he steps in horse poo (which he could have easily avoided) and gets it all over his master’s rug. Not exactly what I call “getting off on the right foot”, but different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Abner also has a sort of surprising strength to him. He is repeatedly described as wiry but “effortlessly” swings the boy up on to the horse and jerks the mule to a stop with one arm. He is also described as grim and we are told he has a “harsh, calm face”.(171) Harsh and calm seem to kind of contradictory, but I think it means he has this potential for anger rages that he tries to mask, kind of like the Incredible Hulk I guess. The combination of strength, anger, and grimness make a pretty scary dude. Faulkner notes multiple times though that Abner does things “without heat”, notably when he strikes his son, pushes his wife out of the way, and when calls someone working in the house a nigger. When he pushes his wife he does it “not savagely or viciously.” I don’t know exactly what we are to make of this. I think it shows that he doesn’t have bad intentions, he just can’t help it. Faulkner’s use of this emphasized my ambiguous feelings towards Abner. Maybe we are supposed to feel sorry for him. It seems there is just something deeply wrong with him that no one can fix. “The old habit, the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself…which had run for so long (and who knew where, battering on what of outrage and savagery and lust) before it came back to him.”(173) Maybe this self-destructive quality is hereditary and Abner looks at it with the attitude that he just can’t do anything about it.

I think the most redeeming qualities Abner has to offer are those when seen through his son’s eyes. His son doesn’t appear to have the same “blood” as his father and brother, who in the little we see of him, appears have the same cruel, violent mindset of his father. He admires his father immensely, though. He always gives him the benefit of the doubt and supports him when the master tries to take 20 extra bushels of crops as payment for the rug Abner ruined. The boy struggles between doing the right thing throughout the story. His father hits him in the beginning of the story for almost telling the truth in court about the previous barn burning, and the boy struggles at the end but ends up telling one of the black workers that his father is going to burn the barn, which results in his father getting shot. After he hears the gunshots, the boy feels “grief and despair” and cries out “He was brave!”(175) Maybe the story isn’t as depressing as I first thought. At least his son did the “right” thing even though it went against his family and was extremely difficult for him to do. This gives us the hope that his son isn’t cursed by his bloodline which makes his future seem brighter and with more possibilities than his father and brother. Abner’s death was inevitable, as deaths tend to be, but I think his was more so because he just didn’t fit in with society what with the arson and rug ruining. Perhaps for Abner death was a release from the cruel Reconstruction South.