Abner Snopes is surely a fascinating character from this
perspective. We are constantly forced to question why he is like he is and why he has
set himself on such a cycle of meaningless violence and anger against those who he
regards as having slighted him. If we read the story carefully, we see that he is
characterised by his anger. He is always looking for an opportunity to take offence
against others, and seems to deliberately provoke such opportunities, as we see when he
refuses to clean his shoes before walking on the carpet of Major de Spain. We see that
he is locked into his own personal hell of revenge, where he believes everybody is
against him and he must take measures to avenge the many supposed wrongs that he
suffers.
Note the way that he responds to Major de Spain's
reasonable confrontation with Abner Snopes, when he tells Abner he will have to pay with
twenty bushels of corn:
His father looked at him--the inscrutable face,
the shaggy brows beneath which the grey eyes glinted
coldly.
We see that Sarty's
father is described as a law unto himself, with eyes that glint "coldly." He is fuse
ready to be sparked by any provocation, even if he has to create that provocation
himself. Psychologically, therefore, Abner Snopes has set himself against the world, and
unleashes the flaming anger within him by literally setting fire to the property of
others. He is a fuse that needs but the slightest of sparks to light
it.
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