Essay Comparing A Rose For Emily And As I Lay Dying

Their qualities can be witnessed in our own lives as well. These shared and distinct characteristics are important factors that drive the plot of their texts. Families care for and protect each other, yet, the two women prove the contrary with their unloving and cold personalities. Emily’s unloving nature is evident when she refuses to aid her sister, Harriet, in receiving a certificate of normalcy.

After her father’s death, Emily insisted that her father “was not dead… for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (Faulkner). This suggests that Emily was unable to accept her father’s death and that she had been experiencing severe symptoms of denial as a result of her trauma. This denial mainly stems from the physical abuse and emotional control her father had placed on Emily, both contributing to her isolation from society and leading to her eventual death. Despite the differences between the stories, both represent the severe effects of trauma and how it can lead to the tragic downfall of one’s

In the short stories “A Rose for Emily” and “The Story of an Hour,” the authors use literary devices to create vibrant female characters. These literary devices include diction, imagery, language, and sentence structure. “The Story of an Hour,” written by Kate Chopin, opens with a woman, Louise Mallard, who has a heart disease, and her friends must gently break the news to her that her husband has passed away in a railroad accident. She mourns briefly, but then realizes that she can now live for herself, instead of just as someone’s wife. Shockingly, she walks downstairs after fleeing from her friends’ horrible news, and her husband walks in the door.

Throughout the short story “A Rose for Emily”, Emily faces hardship and defeat. Miss Emily was mocked by town citizens and was often the center of the town's gossip. The narrator of Miss Emily’s story plays an essential role in developing the tone. The narrator states, “That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart- who we believed would marry her- had deserted her” (Faulkner 307). This quote helps to form a dismal and gloomy tone.

She was seen with a man who was above her social class and still went out with him anyways no matter what the others thought about her. When her father died it was normal for women in that time period to go live with family or a chaperone yet Emily continued to live in her own with only a servant with her. In this story women are portrayed as strong and independent and that they do not need a dominant man in their life to continue living

Not only that, as Homer becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, it scandalizes the town and increases the condescension and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and becoming involved with a man beneath her station. Even though Emily is from the high class family, it does not mean that she is living up to the pleasant lifestyle. As a matter of fact, she is actually living a gloomy and desolate life, which is essentially the opposite lifestyle expected for Emily's rank in society by the townspeople. Although Emily once represented a great southern tradition centering on the landed gentry with their vast holdings and considerable resources, Emily's legacy has devolved, making her more a duty and an obligation than a romanticized vestige of a dying order.

“A Rose for Emily” is a dark, suspenseful Gothic tale in which a young girl is put on a pedestal by a town who sees her as haughty and scornful. Miss Emily Grierson’s father controls her and her love life, pushing away all people until he dies and Emily is left alone. As her life goes on the townspeople watch her and judge Emily, almost turning her life into a spectacle to be talked about. At her death, a gruesome sight is unfolded when her lover of over forty years ago is found decomposed in her upstairs room. William Faulkner effectively builds epic suspense in “A Rose for Emily” by the unchronological order of the story, the treatment of Emily’s father towards her, and her family’s history of mental illness.

Both Emily and Robert are prematurely judged by the narrators in both stories, and the assumptions are so far fetched from the reality. Miss. Emily is perceived to be a lonely old woman, whom nobody ever spoke with. Since they never talk with her or learn anything about what is going on in her life, the townspeople begin to gossip to make up for this. They knew her father had driven away any man from becoming close to her, and they just thought to themselves, “ poor Emily” (32).

-“So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily 's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork,” (Faulkner II). -“When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad,” (Faulkner II). -“The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid,” (Faulkner

The value of romance and mortality resembles the theme of obsession, and is shown throughout the plots, and the characters in, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Birth Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Firstly, Faulkner illustrates obsession of romance through mortality. In addition, Emily’s obsessive illness of love over death it often seen throughout the plot. Lastly, Hawthorne demonstrates the obsession of mortality thorough romance, through the main protagonist, Aylmer in “The Birth Mark.” To compare, Emily and Aylmer believe their obsessive consequences was from the heart, despite their obsessive disorders.

Controlling men are used in all three texts to present disturbing narratives to the reader by creating unjust authority, typically up against a weaker female character. This is displayed in all three texts by the authors. Gilman depicts John as a restricting, dominant physician whose control over the protagonist helps to imprison her even more. Correspondingly, Faulkner implies Emily’s father was also controlling, as he would reject any of Emily’s possible suitors as “none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily” (P. 2).

As the story goes on, Faulkner describes Emily’s death: “When Miss Emily Grierson died the whole town went to her funeral: the men out of respectful affection for a fallen monument and the women mostly out of curiosity” (Faulkner). Faulkner emphasizes that while men are caring and respectful women act only based on curiosity. Indeed, the role of women in the southern society is less significant than the role of

Necrophilia is described as a person having sexual feelings or performing activities that involve a corpse. Miss Emily Grierson, the protagonist in William Faulkner’s short retrospective Gothic “A Rose for Emily,” is a necrophiliac. In this Gothic work, Faulkner illustrates how isolation from society can drive someone to commit grotesque acts. Faulkner expands on the theme of loneliness in his Gothic, “A Rose for Emily,” through the interactions Emily has with the townsmen, the death of Emily’s father, and the death of Homer Barron.

To compare, Faulkner shares a slice of evidence as to why Emily has an uncontrollable obsession for the dead, “After her father 's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” (Faulkner) Given these points, her father becomes arrogant and isolates her from society, or anyone who is willing to take Miss Emily from him. When her father, the only man in the world who has loved her,

Emily is judged for loving a man who is less fortunate than her . In the following line the townspeople’s reactions to their relationship is obvious, “’Poor Emily’, the whispering began. ‘Do you suppose it’s really so?’ they said to one another” (102). The townspeople did not to much care for the relationship between the two because of the barriers set up by social class saying poor date the poor and rich date the rich.