Faulkner: Contrasting Characters

Faulkner takes us through a story with contrasting characters. We have a violent and reckless father, keeping his family in a cycle of poverty through his actions which cause them to move from farm to farm. The father employs violence as a means to flee from his actions, hitting his son “as he had struck two mules” and striking his wife so she falls “into the wall.” The mother somehow manages to maintain a sense of dignity and compassion despite her circumstances, pleading with her husband about his rash actions and immediately noticing the blood on Sartoris’s face. Satoris’s nameless twin sisters, who give into lethargic temptations and do not help the mother and aunt, receive little mention in the story. The mother has instilled her moral
values into Sartoris. We see this come into play at the end, when Sartoris faces a literal and figurative struggle to run to the new landlord’s family and tell them that his father plans to burn their barn as well. Upon research about Faulkner, I found that his mother and grandmother, painters and photographers, taught him how to paint. Faulkner extends these impressions to his story, in which his aunt encourages him to prevent another barn burning.