The campfire episode is also important because it affords Faulkner the opportunity to explain to us why Snopes burns barns. Faulkner notes that the campfire is small, and he contemplates why Abner, who has such a penchant for fire, doesn’t build a larger one. Explaining that an older Sarty might also wonder why, he provides two possible reasons: Because Abner was always hiding from troops during the Civil War, he grew accustomed to building small fires, which would not expose his location; but Faulkner settles on a better explanation, that fire “spoke to some deep mainspring” of Abner’s character “as the one weapon for the preservation of integrity . . . and hence to be regarded with respect and used with discretion.” The threat of fire is his one and only source of power, to be used selectively and effectively should anyone cross his path and anger him.
When the family arrives at the new sharecropping farm, Snopes takes Sarty along with him to see Major de Spain, “the man that aims to begin to-morrow owning me body and soul for the next eight months.” Arriving at the landowner’s mansion, Sarty is astonished by its size. Faulkner emphasizes his theme of justice by having Sarty compare the de Spain mansion to a place of law: “Hit’s big as a courthouse . . . They are safe from him.” Sarty thinks that the mere magnificence of the mansion will stop his father from burning more barns. This belief, no matter how false it might be, creates “a surge of peace and joy” within the young boy, who has known only a life of “frantic grief and despair.” He hopes that his father will be as affected by the house’s grandeur as he is, and that the stateliness of de Spain’s plantation will “even change him now from what maybe he couldn’t help but be.” Sarty’s dream is admirable and demonstrates his youthful innocence, but we know that he will be sorely disappointed.
Immediately, Sarty notices that his father possesses a “stiff black back” that is not dwarfed by the house. Snopes is defiant of the mansion’s magnificence, and as Sarty watches him walk down the lane toward the house, we are presented with the central image of the story:
“Watching him, the boy remarked the absolutely undeviating course which his father held and saw the stiff foot come squarely down in a pile of fresh droppings where a horse had stood in the drive and which his father could have avoided by a simple change of stride.”
As they approach the front of the house, the butler meets them at the door, telling Snopes to wipe his feet before entering, to which Abner responds with a command to the butler, “Get out of my way, nigger.” When Mrs. de Spain orders Snopes out of the house after he deliberately tracks dung on her rug, he pivots intentionally so that his boot makes a “final long and fading smear.” Leaving, he wipes the rest of the manure from his boot on the front steps before looking back at the mansion and commenting: “Pretty and white, ain’t it? ... That’s sweat. Nigger sweat. Maybe it ain’t white enough yet to suit him. Maybe he wants to mix some white sweat with it.”
This encounter, featuring Snopes and his defilement of the de Spain mansion, is the central motivation for the story. To Sarty, the mansion represents everything associated with truth, justice, and culture. That his father could so deliberately soil the aristocratic house with horse manure is inconceivable to him. It is, however, significant that the smearing is done with Snopes’ wounded foot, which suggests his evil character. We know that he was wounded in the Civil War, and because he had no allegiance to either side, he is resentful of his current place in life—a resentment that causes him to strike out blindly at any and all forces that oppose him, or that he perceives as a threat.
Snopes feels superior only when he encounters someone who is black—in this case, the butler. Except in the South, nowhere in the United States could such a white-trash character like Abner Snopes enter the front door of a mansion if the butler forbade entry. However, in the South at the time the story takes place, a black person could not deny admittance to a Southern white person. More accurately, black men could not, under any circumstances, ever touch a white man, even if that white man was not part of the Southern aristocracy. Consequently, Snopes can feel superior to the black butler only because his own skin is white.
Two hours later, Sarty sees de Spain ride up to his father. Along with Sarty, we do not know what trespasses between the two men, but it is soon apparent that de Spain has brought the rug for Snopes to clean. Later, not satisfied with the way his two “bovine” daughters do the job, Snopes picks up a field stone and begins to vigorously scrub—and ruin—the rug himself. His motivations for deliberately soiling and then ruining the rug are essentially related to his wounded foot and his wounded pride. He resents being treated worse than most blacks would be treated, and he is angered by de Spain’s contempt for him.
Early the next morning, Sarty is awakened by his father, who tells him to saddle the mule. With Sarty riding and Snopes walking, they carry the rolled-up rug back to de Spain’s, throw it on his front porch, and return home. Later that morning, de Spain rides up and infuriatingly tells Snopes that the rug is ruined, and that he is charging him 20 bushels of corn for destroying it, in addition to what Snopes already owes for renting the farm.
