Sarty and Dee: Analysis of Faulkner

Faulkner establishes Sarty's rebellion slowly, introducing the reader first to the father's barn-burning past and Sarty's unwilling compliance with his father's wrongdoing, and then detailing the incident with the rug to show the reader how the father acts out his resentment. The father is a man with a chip on his shoulder, literally baiting Mrs. de Spain by walking deliberately through the fresh horse manure-Sarty noting that "his father could have avoided by a simple change of stride"-and then tracking it onto her pristine white rug. As Faulkner describes the scene, with Sarty observing his father, "the boy watched him pivot on the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag round the arc of the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear." His modus operandi is to engender strife with his employer and then to retaliate by burning the employer's barn, an act he has most recently been exonerated from even though he was, in fact, guilty. The father always uses Sarty to accomplish the barn-burning, possibly in an effort to deflect blame from himself and onto his young son, who