William Faulkner's Southern Gothic short story, “A Rose For Emily” uses a slow cadenced, formal writing style to mirror the old fashioned values of the old south. The tale about holding onto old values mirrors in its own cadence and diction the qualities it attempts to undercut. This conflict between old and new is not unique to the tone of the work. The narrator’s use of the first person plural places the reader in a unique perspective through which we can voyeuristically gaze at the title character. The narrator's diction expresses both reverence and pity for “Emily.”…
Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner are both prize-winning American authors and poets, who wrote some of the most memorable short stories, novels, and poems in the world. The two short stories that stand out the most to perhaps every student are titled The Cask of Amontillado by Poe and A Rose for Emily by Faulkner. Both of these stories include death, revenge, mystery, and murder. The Cask of Amontillado is about two men named Montreso and Fortunato. Montreso is seeking revenge on his friend, Fortunato. The only matter that is certain is that Montreso is angry with Fortunato, so angry that he seeks evil revenge. The story leads on allowing the reader to wonder will happen to Fortunato. Then there is the story, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. He tells the story of an old woman who has died, named Emily. She was the talk of the town for many years, and the secrets of her life are revealed as her funeral allows the townspeople to enter her home. A few particular ways that Poe and Faulkner’s stories compare and contrast each other is by point of view and how each story is or is not told in chronological order. Each piece of literature effectively uses literary devices and conventions to illustrate the main points of the story and theme. They are alike in many ways, as they are different. Setting, point of view, characterization, climax, imagery, mood, and other effective literary devices are used throughout each story. Additionally, Poe and Faulkner were two men quite similar to one another, as in the two authors are known for being “dark” individuals with especially unique literary styles. While these stories contain specific differences in plot, such as holding onto the past and revenge, Poe and Faulkner’s works are as similar as the authors themselves.…
The similarities between the two short stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. Both stories have a same setting, both have health conditions and live and a time where women had very few choices on how to run their life.…
William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” carries a theme represented by a dying breed of that era, while using symbolism to represent tragedy, loneliness and some form of pride, the story also shows how far one will go to have the approval of others and the pursuit of happiness.…
When the world is at its worst, we as humans tend to lean on literature. It gives us hope and understanding of our lives. It teaches us that we are not alone. Everything we face another is facing it with us. Works of literature hold the truth of our past, present and future. If we look at the content and theme of similar works such as “A Rose for Emily” by William Faukner, and “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It outlines the ways of our own lives and has us connect to the stories. Despite their obvious differences in content and theme, “A Rose for Emily” and “Yellow Wallpaper” both ultimately show our own lives mirrored to them, and tell the story of the human experience.…
A Rose for Emily, is a tragic story of a young women who was denied the privilege to love and be loved at young age. The author, William Faulkner, was born and raised in Mississippi at the turn of the century. Faulkner is known as one of the 20th century’s best writers. “The man himself never stood taller than five feet, six inches tall, but in the realm of American literature, William Faulkner is a giant” (“William Faulkner”). In the short story A Rose for Emily, Faulkner ties the story together through setting, foreshadowing, symbolism, and most importantly the characters.…
The texts being connected are William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, published in 1930 , and Hugh Garner’s “One, Two, Three Little Indians”, published in 1963. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is of an elderly lady named Emily that lives a life where her childhood had been controlled by her after, leaving him to be the only male figure in her life. Garner’s “One, Two, Three Little Indians”is of a middle aged mine worker known as Big Tom who now lives as an attraction with his Native- American wife at a campground/ trailer park to feed and nurture their sick baby. Strong connections are presented between Emily, in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Big Tom from Garner’s “One, Two, Three Little Indians”, for both exhibit multiple Psychoanalytic Defences, which ultimately result in tragedy.…
The short story “A rose for Emily” published in 1930 by William Faulkner focuses on the life of Emily Grierson, a woman who is from a rich family and, now has to deal with her loneliness after her father’s death. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a complex and dark story that keeps readers guessing and intrigued by Faulkner’s abundant use of literally elements. Faulkner’s use of symbolism in the story is used to enhance the plot and create meaning. The point of view by the use of the unnamed narrator in “A Rose for Emily” makes readers question the identity of the speaker. "A Rose for Emily" recalls the terms of Southern gothic literature that sets the tone of the story as gloomy and grotesque.…
References: Faulkner, W. (2012). A Rose for Emily. In M. Meyer (Ed.), The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature (9th ed., pp. 84-90). New York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s.…
When reading various works of literature, one often overlooks the importance of certain themes, symbols, and styles of writing that emphasize or even create the messages or feelings the author is attempting to convey. These subtle details are essentially the meat and potatoes of any work, and therefore one cannot comprehend the true meaning of the work without fully understanding these literary devices. D.H. Lawrence 's The Rocking Horse Winner is a short story chock full of literary devices that turns this story from a simple, sad tale of a young boy into a grand dilemma consisting of sex, greed, neglect, and hidden lust.…
There is a dangerous tendency in the analysis of literature to bind writers together by a single shared characteristic. This resides especially in the realms of religion, race, social class, and gender. While these attributes do have the capacity to provide a lens for examining common threads among works of literature, they are certainly not the only and can even prove limiting by lessening the reader’s probability of exploring alternate, less immediate concurrencies. Two twentieth century writers, Flannery O’Connor and Stevie Smith, allow for easy comparisons on the surface: both were women, they died seven years apart, neither were affluent nor living in poverty, and both suffered from deadly diseases of their day (lupus and tuberculosis, respectively). Yet with careful consideration, these similarities hint at a different commonality between the two that goes deeper than gender, social class, or historical location. There exists one tie that is not nearly so superficial but is of great thematic importance: their mutual literary fascination with death. This manifests in noticeably singular ways relating to their respective lives, the differences between short story and poetry, the textual connections, and the authors’ personal religious beliefs, with O’Connor utilizing death as a motif for salvation in the short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and Smith applying it as a device for reflection on her own personal encounters with death in the poem “Not Waving But Drowning.” A proper analysis of these texts requires an introductory discussion of the lives and personal beliefs of the two authors. Stevie Smith was born in 1902 with the name Florence Margaret Smith. At a very young age her father abandoned her and her mother, and at age 7 Stevie contracted tuberculosis. This diagnosis required that she be sent to a sanatorium, a place she resided intermittently for years. This incident seemingly triggered her fascination with…
Literature offers a unique view into the human experience. Writers share their ideas about life through language, literary devices, and imagery. The human experience of love is one that every person can relate to. Three examples of literature that share this theme of love are: “A Rose for Emily”, “Love Song”, and “A Doll’s House”. Although some of the stories deal with family and parental love, this paper will focus on the aspect of romantic love. In the story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner romantic love was between Emily and the doomed Homer Barron; the poem “Love Song” by Joseph Brodsky gives the declarations of a man in love; and finally in the drama “A Doll’s House” Nora is fighting for the romantic love of her husband Torvald Helmer. Love is a shared theme in these stories, and the literature portrays this human experience in ways that allow the reader to better understand the mystery of romantic love.…
Romanticism, commonly known as American romanticism, is writing in which feelings and intuition are valued over reason. It had a great influence over literature, music, and painting in the early eighteenth and well through the nineteenth centuries. It was commonly thought of as a trip into our imagination and could be written as stories, music, and paintings, but it was mainly found in poetry. In this essay, I will discuss the romantic qualities of “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, and “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allen Poe.…
“The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence was primarily about materialism, and illustrated how it can negatively impact more important aspects of life, such as love and family. The short story described a troubling relationship between a mother, who is incapable of love, and her son, who desired for his mother to love him. Lawrence created a perfect situation to showcase his theme, for the story is told very similar to a fairy tale. For example, “Rocking Horse Winner” begins with the omniscient narrator describing the mother, “THERE WAS A WOMAN who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.” The sentence assures the audience that the story is pure fiction; therefore, the reader is better able to cope with the multitude of the tragedies and evils that the story contains. Consequently, the reader can assess the story with relatively little emotional distress. The most distasteful aspect of the story is that the mother does not love her children, which in turn significantly contributed to her son’s…
In “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner, published in 1931, he exposes the mentally instable and disturbed mind of Emily Grierson. The story describes a woman living in the American Deep South, in a town named Jefferson, between the 1850’s and 1920’s, when the class structure was very stratified/racially segregated. Faulkner portrays the story in five sections that are out of chronological order, making the story more interesting and compelling as the reader. Through the use of ironic and interesting symbols and themes, the southern gothic fiction literature and movement, along with the captivating characterization, William Faulkner is able to give the reader a first hand experience in considering the different components of what true love are and reveal how troubled and alienated Emily Grierson is.…