A Critical Approach to Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” In “Barn Burning,” by William Faulkner, a tenant farming family is forced to move after the father, Abner, set fire to his neighbor’s barn. Abner did this in retaliation of the neighbor’s keeping Abner’s hog that kept getting in the neighbor’s yard. This was the twelfth time in ten years that the family had to move due to Abner’s fierce anger and …showed first 75 words of 3157 total…

…showed last 75 words of 3157 total…he would live his life. Even though he was too young to understand, he had accepted the choice he had made and would not look back. Faulkner ended the story by saying, “He went on down the hill toward the dark woods within which the liquid silver voices of the birds called unceasing—the rapid and urgent beating of the urgent and quiring heart of the late spring night. He did not look back” (Faulkner 157).