Burning Barns and Sharecropping

Sharecropping is an agricultural process in which a landowner allows someone, a tenant, to use their land if they share a portion of the crops that were grown on the landowners property. In some cases the tenants are more like slaves. They will live on the land that they are using and the landowner provides them with clothing, shelter and supplies. In William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”, Abner Snopes and his family find themselves at one of these farms because Abner caused them to essentially be kicked out of their old town. At this new farm they are living, Sarty, Abner’s son, was asked to clean one of the landowners rugs. This made Abner very upset because he felt like the only reason the landowner had the rug was because his tenants made it possible for him to afford it. Since Abner felt this way, he intentionally damaged the rug to the point where it could not be fixed. When the rug was returned to the landowner he was outraged that Abner would act out in that way. He punished Abner with twenty bushels of corn and that was eventually reduced to ten bushels. However, Abner should have gladly taken the twenty bushel penalty because he was lucky to not be kicked out of another town for his actions.