Barn Burning Foreshadowing

In William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning,” Sartoris Snopes’s father, Abner, burns the property of people he works for as a means of vengeance for being wronged. At the commencement of the story, Abner is on trial for supposedly burning Mr. Harris’s barn following a dispute over a pig. To begin his argument, Mr. Harris mentions to the judge that Abner’s hog had repeatedly gotten loose and into his corn crop. Mr. Harris returned the hog back to Abner twice before keeping it, even being so nice as to give him the proper wiring to fix his pig pen. Following Mr. Harris’s keeping of the pig until a one-dollar fee was paid, a black man representing Abner came over with the dollar, leaving with the foreboding words “‘Wood and hay kin burn’”

Harris’s barn was aflame; he was only able to rescue the livestock from inside. Abner believed that Mr. Harris had wronged him by charging a dollar to take back the pig that escaped; consequently, he burned Mr. Harris’s barn. Burning property is the only way Abner knows how to handle his sense of anger and vengeance. Faulkner writes, “that the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father’s being … as the one weapon for the preservation of integrity, else breath were not worth breathing, and hence to be regarded with respect and used with discretion” (228). When reading this short story, the question may arise as to why Abner burns the barn but not the farm houses. It was common practice during the civil war to steal all things valuable from a residence and then set it on fire; correspondingly, Abner had taken part in this while he was a soldier. To a farm, the barn itself is the most important component; it holds livestock, feed, and items needed to ensure a healthy crop. Abner is well aware of this and knows that the best way to get back at those who do him wrong is to destroy what is most valuable to them. In fact, Abner seems to burn a farm wherever he works, acting as if he expects someone to cross his path at some