Literary Analysis Of Barn Burning
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Barn Burning is a modern story that shows a theme, plot, characters and uses narrative techniques. The title of the story, “Barn Burning,” is used to identify the main method carried out by the father in the story, Abner to get revenge on the people he grew angry with for their treatment of black people in the south. The story does not give a number of the barns Abner had burned, but Sarty said they had moved a lot of different times indicating the moves were due to Abner destroying the property of others. Abner seemed to have a sickness or craving for burning property; this seemed his way of regaining his dignity or self-respect after feeling he was wronged by the evil, hate, and racism of southern society. Abner kept burning fuel handy and had containers to refill when it was time to burn another barn and caused destruction, but when it was time to keep his family warm in the cold outdoors, he would only build small fires. Abner was expressing his rage against how black people were treated in the south, and the only way to express his hatred was to seek revenge. He was aware that in such an unfair system, there was not much he could say in public or do that would not get him killed. So, he devised methods for getting back at society by using destruction and encouraging his family to support him. Abner’s wife, children and sister-in-law had to continuously relocate and in the process scratch, break, and destroy the little possessions they owned, because