atic white boy is named Ringo in The Unvanquished and Alex Sanders in Intruder in the Dust, but their characters are almost identical"(Volpe 16-17)."Faulkner is too complex a writer to explain in terms of a single idea, much of his work can be understood by recognizing that at the center of the fiction is one crucial experience: the transition of a boy to manhood"(Volpe 17). Faulkner often unified his stories by writing about the same families (Volpe 30). His novels and short stories are supposed to not only tell a story, but also convey messages about the society of that time period (Volpe 31-32).Faulkner's greatness as an artist is due to a great extent to what might be called his stereoscopic vision, his ability to deal with the specific and the universal simultaneously, to make the real symbolic without sacrificing reality. He is unquestionably the greatest of the American regional writers. His fiction is as Southern as bourbon whiskey (Volpe 28).Faulkner used the people of Yoknapatawpha County to play roles in several of his writings. His southern upbringing also played a major role in his work. Faulkner's short story "Barn Burning" is a sad story because it very clearly shows the classical struggle between the privileged and the underprivileged classes in the southern culture. Time after time emotions of despair resurface from the characters in the story. The main characters have a poor economic status, and very little hope of improving their condition. Being a sharecropper, Ab Snopes and his family have to share half or two-thirds of the harvest with the landowner, and also out of their share they have to pay for the necessities of life. As a result of this status, Ab and his family know from the start what the future will hold. They will continue to work hard for the landlord, while barely surviving themselves. There is no hope for advancement throughout the story. Sarty, his brother and the twin sisters have no acce...
