Barn Burning

So...I was impressed by Faulkner's writing style and thought he was pretty (not just pretty--very) talented in the craft of building fiction in the form of short stories, but he sure confused me. Hepworth said in class that it was very obvious who the antagonist was in the story, "Barn Burning," but I think it was obviously NOT obvious, because I thought the first half of the story's antagonist was the Justice of the Peace. The boy in the story, the protagonist (obvious), looked up to his father for most of the story and sided with his father, as most of us would have done, which leads us to believe that those who went against him or his father would have to have been the antagonists. It is not until the end of the story when we actually get proof that the father really did set fire to the barns, and even then, it wasn't entirely clear to me that it was the father ar all at first, or rather they were innocent victims of coincidence. I'm not completely narrow-minded, however, and gathered that it had to have been the father who set the fires, and the son, once enlightened had a huge problem with it, and ran away forever. What a sad ending--he had a mother who loved him very much as well as an Aunt who surely would have taken care of him with or without his father, as is maternal instinct, BUT the fact that they held him while his father took off toward the barn leads me to believe that they were willing participants. Any takers? What does anyone else think? Were they in on it, or were they just simply victims of a patriarchal society in which whatever the 'head of the household' decides is doable is what becomes done--right or wrong. I'm curious.