Green=Evidence
Yellow=Analysis of Evidence
In both stories, the young male protagonists love their parents but are disappointed in their behavior. In
Faulkner’s text, Sarty is embarrassed by Abner and in awe of him. His fractured relationship with his father is
first evident in the initial paragraph of the text. Sarty is lamenting the pull of “blood” that tethers him to his
father. In the passage that reflects the omniscience of the narrator, Faulkner notes Sarty’s displeasure: “our
enemy he thought in the despair; ourn! mine and hisn both! He’s my father!” (3). Sarty, who is basically honest
and hardworking, is angry that biology has linked him to a father who is both a criminal and violent. It is clear
that he is conflicted. His father would like for him to lie in the opening court proceeding, but Sarty does not feel
comfortable doing so. He knows that loyalty requires him to take up his father’s causes and enemies, yet he
longs to adhere to his own sense of honor. Sarty is embarrassed by not only his father’s poor behavior, but also
by his poverty. When Sarty and Abner arrive at the de Spain estate, which demonstrates the wealth of its
owner, Sarty is in awe and very disdainful of his father. Noting that his father is unimpressed with the estate, he
decides that “People whose lives are a part of this peace and dignity are beyond his [Abner’s] touch, he no
more to them than a buzzing wasp: capable of stinging for a little moment but that’s all” (Faulkner 10). Though
Abner intends for this visit to the de Spains’ to be a lesson in the appalling disparity between the rich and poor,
Sarty accepts wealth as evidence of goodness and confirms his father’s—and therefore his own—insignificance
in the face of such wealth and power.
Despite Sarty’s negative feelings toward Abner, he also has a grudging respect for his father. Upon
entering the de Spain home, Sarty notes the sound of “his father’s stiff foot as it came down on the boards with
a clocklike finality, a sound out of all proportion to the displacement of the body it bore and which was not
dwarfed either by the white door before it, as though it had attained to a sort of vicious and ravening minimum
not to be dwarfed by anything” (Faulkner 11). In this scene, Abner intentionally tracks horse feces into the
home. Though Sarty wishes that his father would see the house’s majesty and mend his ways, he is aware of his
father’s unwavering confidence. The fact that he, even with a permanently injured leg, is not cowed by the
display of wealth and materialism is a feat that Sarty has not yet attained. The most significant demonstration
of his respect for his father comes at the end of the story when Faulkner implies that Abner has died as a result
of Sarty alerting de Spain of Abner’s impending arson. Falkner reveals Sarty’s “grief and despair” and his
conflicted love for his father (14). Sarty thinks “Father My father. . . ‘He was brave!’ he cried suddenly, aloud
but not aloud, no more than a whisper; ‘He was! He was in the war! He was in Colonel Sartors’ cav’ry’”
(Falkner 14). Despite all that has transpired, Sarty still thinks of his father in those respectful terms. Therefore,
at the end, he acknowledges the significance of the father whom he was ready to deny earlier in the text.
Similar to the Abner-Sarty dynamic, Buddy clearly loves his mother, Albertine, but he also does not
seem happy about the example that she sets. As Buddy hides from the government officials who would like to
remove him from his mother’s care, he is anxious. While Albertine sleeps, seemingly without a care, he fears
the “great metal thing with hooks and barbs and all sorts of sharp equipment to catch their bodies and draw their
blood” (Erdrich 2). The “metal things’ represent mainstream American society’s intrusion into Native
American lives. Buddy seems significantly younger than Sarty, but he feel no more protected by his mother
than Sarty does by his arsonist father. His life has been uprooted and disturbed because of her behavior, and his
mother provides little comfort for the looming destruction of their family. Albertine, as the narrative reveals, is
an alcoholic with an unstable love life. Buddy has the added pressure of being the “best thing in his mother’s
life,” and he feels that he is cause of their need to flee (Erdrich 2). Therefore, the mother-son relationship is
inverted because he is solely responsible for his mother’s happiness. The most significant example of Buddy’s
ambivalent feelings toward his mother is his infrequent wish that she would die. Though he experiences regret
about this wish, it demonstrates the extremity of the burden of having to care for his mother. Young Buddy is
torn between loyalty to his mother and resentment of her shortcomings as a parent.
Nonetheless, he loves Albertine dearly. Upon the arrival of the authorities, he feels “as close as he had
ever been to back inside her again where she said he came from. Within the smells of her things, her soft skin,
and the satin of her roses, he closed his eyes then, and took his breaths softly and quickly with her heart”
(Erdrich 3). Unlike Sarty who frequently finds his father inscrutable, Buddy knows that his mother loves him,
and he eagerly returns her affection. After seeing his mother be physically assaulted by Leo Harmony, the
police officer, and being taken into the custody of the state, Buddy’s affection for his mother is most poignant.
In that scene, the social worker attempts to mollify him with a chocolate bar. However, after “he had the
chocolate down inside him and all licked off his hands, he opened his mouth to say thank you to the woman, as
his mother had taught him. But instead of thank you coming out he was astonished to hear a great rattling
scream, and then another, rip out of him like pieces of his own body and whirl onto the sharp things all around
him” (Erdrich 11) Erdrich uses the chocolate symbolically. Just as the “metal things” signify government
intrusion, the candy bar symbolize mainstream American society’s attempt to make him content with the
dissolution of his family and the Native American community. His scream represents his love for his mother
and his unwillingness to quietly accept the intrusion of outside forces. Thus, Buddy’s and Sarty’s parental
relationships reveal the benefits and drawbacks of familial loyalty.