"Fear" and "foresight" are linked concepts in the story. The idea of "foresight" suggests that Sarty is smart enough to know what to expect from his father. This foresight is informed by a kind of hindsight: Abner is constantly fighting the battles of the past, persecuting others for old slights, perpetually angry at being poor and white. His hatred of his betters has nothing to do with them specifically. He hates their privilege. When Abner tells Sarty that he must learn to "stick to his own blood," it is as much a threat as advice. Sarty knows that he must obey his father and that his father will continue to set fires.
This makes Sarty's decision to warn de Spain about his father a turning point. For Sarty, the desire to break out of the pattern of violence his father enacts is greater than his fear of retribution. He comes to understand that fear is what keeps his family hostage to his father's anger, and that this fear will doom himself and his family to a future of similar nights. Perhaps one way to understand his decision is that his fear of the future became greater than his fear of his father.
William Faulkner presents contrasting examples of people who lack the ability to associate fear and foresight or who have that ability; this contrast appears through the characters of the father and son.
Ab Snopes may know that what he is doing is wrong, but his identity is completely self-centered. He experiences every action in terms of his ego and is inappropriately oversensitive to every perceived insult. In that he was sternly warned about the consequences of his arson, he is well aware that his actions will have consequences. He has foresight in terms of understanding his likely punishment if caught. But the foresight does not deter him. He is incapable of forming a healthy fear, either for himself or for his child.
Sarty is thus placed in the unenviable position of behaving as the adult in this situation. His fear includes foresight of multiple consequences, which include harm to the deSpain family versus the punishment his father will receive. Although his father issues prouncements about "blood," he utterly disregards his familial responsibility.
Ab exhibits the emotional maturity more typical of a toddler, unable to accept anyone else's authority and willfully repeating the exact behavior their parent just forbade.
Fear and foresight can be closely related. While fear is usually the result of facing the unknown, it can be grounded in reality when one has experienced something similar in the past. This is the case in "Barn Burning."
Sarty knows what his father, Abner, is capable of: the man has burned barns in the past and shown himself more than capable of inflicting damage to other people, even within Sarty's own family. The crux of the story occurs when Sarty must struggle with his conscience and his terror: either he allows his father to continue his mindless, vengeance-fueled rampage, or he can break away from the self-destructive path of his father by foiling his plans.
Sarty's foresight prompts his fear, but it also helps him overcome it. Knowing what his father will do, he quickly informs the De Spains of Abner's plan to destroy their barn. He is so terrified at the possible consequences of this betrayal to his father that he can barely form two words when issuing the warning. While this means he will be viewed as a family traitor, he is able to grow up and become his own man through this act of courage—defiance of fear.
It is Sarty whose actions exemplify the interplay between fear and foresight when individuals make life-altering choices.
Sarty is a young boy who is afraid of his father for what his father could do to him or to other people. He knows that he cannot take an open moral stand when he sees that his father is wrong; this is made clear after the opening scene when his father accuses Sarty of entertaining thoughts of turning against him after he has burned Harris's barn and faced a community court on this charge. His father tells Sarty that he has "got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you." Sarty's father implies that if Sarty is not loyal to him in all cases, Sarty will no longer be a part of the family.
After the incident with the rug at Major deSpain's house and the court's finding against his father, Sarty has the foresight to understand what his father's response will be because he has seen it before. Abner will retaliate with fire, and he commands Sarty to help him prepare. Sarty's decision to run to deSpain's house and warn him is informed by the knowledge that in doing so, he is risking his place in his family. So it is with foresight of what it will cost him that Sarty makes his moral stand and turns from his father. He accepts the fear that comes with his decision, and presumably the guilt, too, that results when his father has likely been shot.
Generally speaking, fear is a product of foresight. It is only when one can conceive of negative consequences of one's actions that fear arises. To answer the second part of the question unrelated to "Barn Burning," you need only to remember a time that you declined to take a course of action because you feared the outcome, or a time when you elected to take a course of action and accepted the fear that accompanied the decision.
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