Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner has made a name for himself with his own unique style of writing. With his constant use of metaphors and eloquently long sentences, Faulkner has as profound an impact on his readers with a twenty-page short story as other authors do using hundreds of pages. However, despite all of the great literary devices he uses, the greatest aspects of Faulkner's stories are the great characters that he skillfully fabricates. Some of Faulkner's greatest characters are Nancy from "That Evening Sun," Miss Emily from "A Rose for Emily," and Sartoris Snopes from "Barn Burning." Profound, deep characters like these are essential to his stories because most of the action occurs internally. In fact, Faulkner specializes in analyzing his characters in time of dire internal self-conflict. He believes that psychological issues are the most dismal problems one can encounter. Therefore, Faulkner tries to "scar" his readers by placing, beneath the cl!
             imax of his stories, the epiphany of a character's struggle within themselves.
             Beneath the climax of "Barn Burning" lies, more importantly, Sarty's conquering of his feelings of inferiority within himself. Sarty feels burdened and helpless under the father he so greatly fears. His father, Abner Snopes, is constantly depicted throughout the text as being an almost devil-like character. Abner has an obsession with the element of fire, and holds a "harsh level stare beneath the shaggy, irascible brows" (Faulkner 8). Abner walks with an "ironlike black coat before him," and possesses an "impervious quality of something cut ruthlessly from tin, depthless, as though, sidewise to the sun, it would cast no shadow" (9). He treats his wife and kids harshly, and the narrator describes his "lifted hand like a curled claw" (10). At the beginning of the story, Abner senses Sarty's lack of allegiance to him and slaps the little boy, screaming, "You're getting to b...