Preview

A Rose For Emily And How I Met My Husband Comparison Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
853 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Rose For Emily And How I Met My Husband Comparison Essay
Through the use of first-person point of view, authors Alice Munro and William Faulkner achieve contrasting effects.
I. Alice Munro's "How I Met My Husband"
A. Cite character who tells story
B. Cite position from which story is told
C. Cite the effects the position has on the reader
II. William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
A. Cite character who tells the story
B. Cite the position from which the story is told
C. Cite the effects that the position has on the reader
III. Compare and Contrast the Effects
A. "How I Met My Husband"
B. "A Rose for Emily"
IV. Vantage Points
A. What is missing due to the position from which the story is told
Conclusion

When a story is told from first-person point of view, the author fades away into one of the characters. The character telling the story may be major or minor, protagonist or observer. The position from which the story is told makes a considerable difference on the thoughts of the reader. Through the use of first person point of view, authors Alice Munro and William Faulkner achieve contrasting effects.
…show more content…
Edie, the protagonist, spends what seems to be a life time waiting on a letter from a lover who promised to write. Though it appears that Edie's love life is in abeyance, we soon learn that she has a secret admirer, the mailman. The reader learns of Edie's impatience when she states the "no letter was ever going to come." Edie's impatience made her vulnerable. Her admirer seems to use her vulnerability to his advantage by phoning her and asking her out on a date. To the reader's surprise, this one date leads to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Bayou Farewell

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Told in the first person point of view. The book gives the reader a true first hand account of the narrators trip down the bayou. It makes it seem less like fiction and more believable. By writing in the first person, the reader is able to feel as if they are there with the narrator experiencing everything he does, as he experiences it.…

    • 946 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Updike's "A&P" narrates a good story that most of its readers get caught up in the flow and attractiveness of its content. At some point, it can be difficult to tell who is narrating the story. One of the most challenging ideas in starting the investigation of fiction is the story's point of view or its perspective. But a story is decorated with the type, the tone, and the perspective of the voice telling it. Therefore, it is important for a reader to identify the narrator's voice so that he or she can identify and examine what effects that voice has on how they view the story.…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The use of first person narrative in these two texts helps to emphasis the realness of these stories and how these interactions with their world warped and changed them for better and for worse. Through first person narrative we are able to identify with the text because it is a…

    • 1246 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Point of view is an important literary device that an author may use to help enrich the plot of the story. Different point of views (such as first person, third person, omniscient, ect) offer a different style of storytelling and can be used to great effect. Ernest Hemmingway and Richard Ford’s stories feature different point of views. “Great Falls” is told in first person with the main character, Jackie, serving as the narrator. In “Hills Like White Elephants” a third person point of view is used. These two different point of views create a vastly different perspective for the reader.…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since the beginning of time, women have been treated as second class citizens. Therefore, women were forced to face many problems. Because of this women were repressed. At that time, the Napoleonic Code stated that women were controlled by their husbands and cannot freely do their own will without the authority of their husband. This paper shows how this is evident in the "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin and " A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. In both stories, the use of literary elements such as foreshadowing, symbolism, and significant meaning of the titles are essential in bringing the reader to an unexpected and ironic conclusion.…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The point of view used in a novel plays a vital role in a reader’s experience. When an author chooses to use a first-person point of view, the audience is limited to the experiences and thoughts of the narrator. This results in a one-sided view of the plot. Using a first-person narrator also controls how much knowledge the reader is granted. When the narrator is detached from the conflict in the story, the reader’s information is limited. In contrast, when the narrator is more involved, so is the reader. “The Corn Planting” and “In Another County” both utilize first-person narrators to reveal important information about the hardships and grief of the other characters.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rhetoric of Fiction

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages

    3. Each shift from the perspective of one character to another is a reminder of the “author’s presence”.…

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In most traditional works of literature, the existence of narration is both a crucial and mandatory element in order to fulfill the writer's purpose. Such works of literature include short stories and novels. The importance of the narrator goes beyond the act of simply telling a story that happens in a specific place at one particular point in time. Through the course of the years, famous writers have used the narrator as a tool to create suspense and force the audience to read the story from a specific point of view. Within this group of writers, William Faulkner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman have used the narrator to allow the reader to interpret the story from a desired point of view. Faulkner achieves this by using first person narrator…

    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel ‘the lovely bones’ the character Susie displays a physical transition as she progresses through different places in her life, from being alive, to dead, to in-between. This is shown through the use of first person narrative. As Susie has to cope with the new obstacles beginning to form in her life and the new catalyst of loneliness she has to also deal with the physical change from being alive on Earth to being dead in her new form of ‘heaven’. In order for her to move on she has to physically overcome the obstacles in her way to reach her new heaven. This is shown through the use of first person. First person gives the reader or audience a person insight to the pathway that Susie is taking, developing an instant relationship to the character. In many ways it helps the audience to become consumed in Susie’s tragedy of rape and murder. For Susie the rape and murder that she had encountered was also another physical obstacle that she was faced with as it physically lead to the movement of Susie from Earth to her ‘heaven’. ‘I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973’. Through the use of first person the transition Susie under takes, also becomes our movement. First person highlights the physical adventure Susie takes.…

    • 825 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The character Emily, from “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and the Narrator, from “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman were both young women from similar time periods. Their belief system reflected the era in which they lived. Emily lived in a post-civil war mansion that was dilapidated, she was the unmarried daughter of a once very influential member of the community. At one time, her family had money, but that was no longer the case and her home disclosed this fact. Unlike the Narrator’s life, she was married to a well-respected physician, who was in good standing within their community, suggesting an above average income as they could afford to summer in a colonial mansion, even though it was somewhat rundown. The lives of both these characters were oppressed in different ways, slowly diminishing each woman’s mental capacity over time, causing each of them extreme emotional anguish, leading…

    • 1238 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay: a Rose for Emily

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, the reader can conclude that Emily appears to have had schizophrenia by way she interacts in the town. Emily’s mental problems start to come to light to the reader when she begins having hallucinations. The reader gains further background and further sees mental instability in Emily right after her father dies. The town people also begin to see that there are mental issues with Emily, yet do not want to make it known to keep the integrity of the town. Emily’s inability to form age appropriate coping skills furthers the point of schizophrenia.…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    People can understand the difference between what is right and what is wrong. In the legal system, a person's failure to act can result in a terrible situation where someone can die. William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" shows how a whole town doesn't use the law to help in the situation, which was the result of the death of Homer Barron. The argument will be that there was an affirmative duty and the townspeople failed to respond.…

    • 1350 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    A story requires two simple components: action and characters to drive the action. The way either element is presented is purely the decision of the author. The best stories make readers feel that they know the characters, so much so that the characters become real to the readers. This is the case in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”. Faulkner does an impeccable job of introducing readers to Miss Emily, and through her actions he makes it clear what kind of person she is and why she is that way. Miss Emily is the result of the overkill of love’s protection, thus making her a proud, commanding, and lonely woman.…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Second Person Narrator

    • 269 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Although not the most common narrative technique in literary fiction, second-person narration has constituted a favoured form of various literary works within, notably, the modern and post-modern tradition. In addition to a significant number of consistent (or nearly consistent) second-person novels and short-stories by, for example, Albert Camus, Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Carlos Fuentes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the technique of narrative second-person address has been widely employed in shorter or longer intermittent chapters or passages of narratives by William Faulkner, Günter Grass, Italo Calvino, Iain Banks, Nuruddin Farah, Jan Kjærstad and many…

    • 269 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” are both stories about women that struggle with love. In a Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson is in the need to get married, while in The Story of an Hour, Louise Mallard is convinced that her husband is dead and we she finds out that he isn’t, it saddens Louise and ultimately kills her. The characters, the setting, and the idea of repression in both stories are three topics that can be compared in these two selections.…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays