“Barn Burning” explores themes of loyalty, family, justice, and revenge. Set in the American South during Reconstruction, “Barn Burning” focuses on the Snopes family—struggling tenant farmers living on the fringes of the community due to the patriarch’s illegal activities. The primary conflict in the story concerns the protagonist, Sartoris Snopes, who is torn between loyalty to his father and his own sense of justice. Thematically, “Barn Burning” considers the moral gray area around blood loyalty, asking, is family loyalty more important than moral rightness? Faulkner’s study of loyalty and justice is multifaceted. Sartoris’s struggle is shown to be a human conflict that affects all areas of life, on an individual and communal level. Ultimately, Sartoris chooses justice over loyalty—and while his choice sets him free from his father’s criminality, Faulkner suggests that Sartoris can never escape the guilt and grief of family violence.

Sartoris’s emotional conflict is described as a rending, as though he is being torn in two: “corn, rug, fire; the terror and grief, the being pulled two ways like between two teams of horses—gone, done with for ever and ever” (12). Despite his conflicted feelings, Sartoris loves and is emotionally loyal to his father, going so far as to see his father’s enemy as his own: “our enemy he thought in that despair; ourn! mine and hisn both! He’s my father!” (1).