Emily Grierson Recovery

Sometimes in life we find ourselves searching to replace or relive those moments or people that have played integral parts of our lives. These moments, for whatever reason, have a hold on us. They’ve left a yearning deep within us that won’t be quenched until we experience something or someone that feels just as good. However, the sad truth is that sometimes we waste our whole lives searching for that thing that probably will never be again and miss the preciousness of every moment thereafter.
In many ways art imitates life. With each stroke of the painter’s brush or author’s pen, the art takes life based upon its relationship to our reality. Just as landscape portraits mirror the natural world, some stories mirror our natural lives. Over
the past semester we have read a few pieces that become personal because they mirror some element or elements or our lives. Some in particular have mirrored situations of lost and the constant quest by the characters to recover what has been lost.
One of the best examples of lost and the quest for recovery found in our reading is the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner.
In this story, Faulkner paints the picture of a lady who is stuck in a time and place that no longer exist in the real world around her. He shows her acting in ways, that to others are very strange, in order to hold on to what was in her life rather than pick up and move on with life. Faulkner shows how the world around Ms. Emily Grierson had changed by describing the neighborhood around her had changed over the years. He also tells of her strange ways to cope with these changes. When Emily’s father died, she refused his body to be turned over for burial. She keeps her father’s body in their home for three days. He also tells of Emily’s way to cope with the loss of relationship. Emily had for years dated a man by the name of Homer Barron. This relationship, like life with her father, was a safe place for her and a happy time in her life. However, after the relationship failed, Homer was last seen alive entering her house on evening. Later, we find that Emily had killed him and kept his body. She had dressed him for marriage, the thing she really wanted from Homer, and been sleeping with his body. Through this story we are shown Emily’s constant struggle but ultimate inability to recover what has been loss in her
life.
In another story, we see a similar struggle to recover what once was. “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich tells the story of two brother “Henry Jr.” and “Lyman”. The two brothers acquired a red convertible car after a tornado blew down the business that Lyman had worked so hard to buy and run. Though they acquired the car as a result of misfortune, the car turns out to be a great thing for the two brothers living on a Native American Reservation in Minnesota . The car gave the brothers the freedom to go just about anywhere they wanted. They drive all summer going to and froe, going wherever the wind and the day takes them. During these moments, the brother grow extremely closer and having irreplaceable bonding moments.
Henry Jr, is sent to war by the American government to fight in the Vietnam War. While Henry served honorably, he came back a different person than how he left. He suffered a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, however the resources available to Henry both on the reservation and in this time period (1970’s) where unable to help him cope with his trauma. The car at this point represented what life and the relationship between the brothers once was. Lyman tries to leverage the car to restore the now fragmented relationship between the brothers, however, Henry, who is dealing with his war experiences, is not very keen on taking up his brothers “olive branch” and rekindling the relationship. Henry Jr. ultimately commits suicide as a result of the demons he faced as a result of the war. Henry drowns himself in the river. Lyman after trying to retrieve his brother, runs the car into the river, symbolizing the loss of the relationship with his brother, that now just like the his brother has sank to the bottom of the river.
Unlike the before mentioned readings, Stephen Alexander’s Cornerstone Speech, is a justification for a succession that tried to prevent the eminent loss of a way of life and economical process we refer to as American slavery. In this speech given to a eager crowd in Savannah, Georgia in 1861, the dawning of the American Civil War, Stephens defends the act of slavery and the Confederacy’s succession from the Union. Stephens, in this desperate stretch, justifies slavery by saying “ its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Stephens in his speech is trying to rally support around a cause that history tells us will ultimately fail. Stephens is trying to prevent the need for the loss and possibly recovery stories of riches, land, prominence, and grandeur that will soon be told all around the South.
It is said that “art imitates life”, however in Oscar Wildes’ 1889 essay “The Decay of Lying”, he suggests life imitates art much more than life imitates life. For this very reason, I believe we are so drawn to stories to loss and recovery. At some point in these few fleeting moments in time we call life, we will lose something that we hold near and dear to our hearts. Whether it be a relationship or a way of life, it will come and go. At some point in life we will muster up every ounce of strength we can gather and fight to recover what we lost.
Some fights we will win.
Some fights we will lose.
With every stroke of the painter’s brush or authors, the picture that is paints touches us. Not because its so beautiful or profound, but because these story touch a place in us because they are us or will be us.