Is there a way to view Ab in "Barn Burning" by William Faulkner as an empathic or sympathetic character?

It is pretty tough to find a way to view Ab Snopes as sympathetic. One might automatically begin to feel some sympathy for someone who has to eke out such a difficult living as he and his family do, moving all the time from place to place, but that sympathy disappears when we learn that Ab is basically a serial arsonist who beats his son for not being willing to lie more convincingly when Snopes is tried for burning his boss, Mr. Harris's, barn down.
After he's ordered to leave town, Ab says,

"I aim to. I don't figure to stay in a country among people who . . ." He said something unprintable and vile, addressed to no one.

He evidently has some grudge against the people he acts against, and maybe if we had some sense of why, we could feel more sympathy for him. As it is, his behavior toward his new boss, de Spain, seems totally unwarranted—he doesn't even know this man—and he purposely ruins Mrs. de Spain's rug and then burns down their barn. It is tough to sympathize with him and even tougher to empathize!