The father is violent when he thinks that he has been threatened. .
The son uses satanic images to describe his nightmarish vision of his father. For instance, as they go up the drive, Sarty follows his father: traditionally, the devil casts no shadow and Mr Snopes' figure appears to the child as having "that impervious quality of something cut ruthlessly from tin, depthless, as though sidewise to the sun it would cast no shadow" (p.168). Fire, the element of the devil, is the weapon for the preservation of his superiority. He cannot accept no order beyond his own. In the text, there are several references to Heaven and Hell (the constant evocation of the fire with the "scarlet devils" on the cans, p.162, "Damnation!", p.163, "in the red haze", p.164, "the light.flaring up", p.173). In the satanic myth, Lucifer asserts his will against the divine order and he is cast out of heaven. The angels who fall with Lucifer become extensions of his will. .
The father's will is so great that it creates a force into which everything (and everyone) must flow or be destroyed. He cannot tolerate anybody who would challenge the dominance of his will. By allowing his hog to come into the farmer's corn and by dirtying and ruining de Spain's rug, he deliberately creates a conflict that would assert his supremacy. In the same way, Sarty' s father is seen as an outcast and pariah among men ("Leave this country and don't come back to it", p.164) but he accepts no order that is not of his blood ("to learn to stick to your own blood.any blood to stick to you" p.167).
For him, he is Abner Snopes versus the rest of mankind; he instructs the boy that everyone is his enemy. For Mr Snopes, "they" is the enemy. The boy says that "If I had said they wanted only truth, justice, he would have hit me again" (p.167).
Sarty' s resistance is a recognition of "something" beyond his father. Sarty is struggling to be himself. He answers with such intensity to de Spain 's house because he sees it as an object completely isolated from his father's will.
