"Blood is thicker than water." This phrase has been said many times by many people, but in William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" it is put to the test. Colonel Sartoris Snopes, known as Sarty, is a young boy in conflict over his "old fierce pull of blood" to his father and what he knows to be truthful and honest. Sarty is the son of Abner Snopes, a sharecropper who time after time finds himself in legal battles over his confrontational actions and vindictive act of burning barns. Sarty has been taught that you are loyal to your blood, no matter what, but
             Sarty's conscience tells him what his father does is wrong. As Sarty comes into his own, he struggles between his "blood" and the need to do what he knows is right.
             When the narrator first introduces us to Sarty, he is standing in back of a store being used as courtroom where his father is on trail for burning Mr. Harris' barn after a dispute over a pig. Sarty is a scared, hungry little boy wanting to tell the truth but not sure, he has the courage to speak out against his father. When the Justice of the Peace called Sarty to testify, Faulkner reveals Sarty's internal struggle with lying for his father when he knows his father is guilty of burning down Mr. Harris' barn. Sarty says to himself, "He aims for me to lie, and I will have to do hit." To Sarty's relief he does not have to testify, and his father is not charged, but is ordered to leave town. As they leave the courthouse, Sarty tries to prove his love for his father by fighting to defend him as a boy from the crowd yells out "Barn burner." Sarty is desperate to please and believe in his father, but as time goes on, the "old fierce pull of blood" starts to weaken as he begins to see the truth.
             As the family is evicted from yet another town, Sarty says to himself, "Maybe he's done satisfied now, now that...