The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Ab Snopes older son, Sarty's older brother, is never mentioned by name, but from the Yoknapatawpha fictions as a whole it is clear that he is Flem Snopes, one of the major recurring figures in those fictions, and the central character of Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy. He plays only a minor role in "Barn Burning," as the willing accomplice in his father's own criminal 'scorched-earth' campaign against the big plantation owners. Faulkner aficionados, however, should recognize him as Flem by his constant "chewing" (5, 22).

Sarty's unnamed older sister. She and her twin sister Net are described as lazy, "big, bovine, in a flutter of cheap ribbons" (9). They do very little to help with household chores, leaving most of the work to their mother and aunt.

Net is one of Sarty's older sisters. She and her unnamed twin are described as lazy, "big, bovine, in a flutter of cheap ribbons" (9). They do very little to help with household chores, leaving most of the work to their mother and aunt.

Ten-year-old Colonel Sartoris "Sarty" Snopes is the focal character in "Barn Burning." The youngest of sharecropper Ab Snopes's four children, he is "small for his age, small and wiry like his father, in patched and faded jeans even too small for him, with straight, uncombed, brown hair and eyes gray and wild as storm scud" (4).

The first Justice who appears in the story is a "shabby, collarless, graying man in spectacles"; he presides over the Ab Snopes' trial in makeshift court in a general store (4). Described as having a "kindly" face, he discourages Harris from making young Sarty Snopes undergo questioning (4). While the Justice does not have enough evidence to convict Ab of burning Harris' barn, he tells him: "I can't find against you, Snopes, but I can give you advice. Leave this country and don't come back to it" (5).

The Stevenses are one of Jefferson's most prominent families, and other members of the family play major roles in a number of Yoknapatawpha fictions. Given his age in the story, 80, and the approximate period during which he was that age, the late 19th century, the Judge Stevens who appears here may have been the first Stevens to settle in Yoknapatawpha, and seems to have been Mayor of Jefferson around the same time that "Colonel" Sartoris was mayor as well.

A Jefferson woman, "thirty-eight or thirty-nine" years of age (173), who accuses Will Mayes of assault, setting Faulkner's story in motion. She is described as "still on the slender side of ordinary looking, with a bright, faintly haggard manner and dress" (174). Never married, she lives with her mother and aunt, and has received local derision for her romantic travails and, more recently, her drinking. Toward the end of the story she suffers a nervous breakdown in a movie theater.