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Belonging In William Faulkner's Barn Burning

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Belonging to a being much bigger than yourself can sometimes make the world seem entirely easier to deal with and get through but on the other hand it can sometimes cripple the individual to a point where their life is nothing but a meaningless cycle of living for the larger being than with it. This can be seen in no better light than in William Faulkner’s classic telling of “Barn Burning” where the author utilizes point of view and character development to help his readers understand and care for the story’s theme. That theme being that belonging to something much bigger than yourself is not always a great thing if you have to loss yourself in order to be a part of it. Faulkner established the foundation on which he is meant to build his theme upon by introducing his readers to the Snopes family, a family of seven that is “lead” or in this case mislead by their crazed and misguided patriarch Abner Snopes who’s common disregard for others and inability to let things go has turned his family into followers without a voice and has led to them literally burning their bridges in the past. The first example of William Faulkner’s displays that the family is not worth being a part of comes from Abner’s unwillingness to listen to the concerns of others shown thru his encounter with Mr. Harris a man who had constantly found the Snopes’ family pig on his premises are returned it time and time again going as …show more content…

Sartoris’ dilemma teaches readers that the desire to belong, while enticing, is not one that we as people want to follow blindly fore if we do we might be led down a path that pushes us to not only loss sight of what is important but also loss sight of

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