Compare And Contrast A Rose For Emily And Southern Gothic

In the 19th century, the Southern Gothic genre quickly became popular after Edgar Allen Poe poems in the 18th century. Most writings were formed around the Civil War era, which plays an enormous part in the tone and setting in Southern Gothic writing styles. (O’Connell 63) Southern Gothic writing elements consist of “horror, romance and psychological and domestic dramas” (63). The setting of Southern Gothic was always dingy and dark which explains the tone of most southern states at this time. Southern Gothic writing styles were known to be grotesque, violent and gloomy with dark psychological twists that were to be carried on into the 20th century. There can also be other ways to exercise Southern Gothic styles like including strange events, paranormal elements and representing history in an almost comical approach. (63) There are some authors who have written very influential Southern Gothic style literature, such as A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People by Flannery O’Conner.

The extreme example of her need to control change, to keep time "in her pocket," is her poisoning Homer and placing him carefully in the upstairs room. The townspeople have joined forces with the representatives of her own family and are on the verge o f separating her from him, just as earlier they separated her from her father. Homer alive and active in her life has become too serious an affront to those around her. The only way she can keep him with her is to arrest his activity and to suspend his vi tality. As a corpse, this Yankee outsider will be less offensive to the sensibilities of the closed Southern community. (Evidence exists of the town's complicity in Homer's murder. Their knowledge of Emily's purchase of the arsenic, followed by Homer Barron's disappearance and the subsequent odor surrounding the Grierson house indicate at least some level of community awareness of what had happened.) More important for Emily, however, Homer will now stay fixed as a part of her life forever.

William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily displays most if not all the characteristics of the Southern Gothic Literature genre presented in Courtney Ban’s video on "Southern Gothic Literature". Faulkner’s tale offers the “unusual, ironic events (that) provide progression and explore the social and cultural problems of the time”, it “features the grotesque” and gives a “sense of place”.

The authors of Southern Gothic writing use damaged characters to enhance their stories, and to show deeper highlights of unpleasant southern characteristics. These characters are usually set apart from their societies due to their mental, physical, and or

The single most important aspect that defines southern gothic writing is the use of macabre, or malformed, events. These distinguished events are easy identified in both of these short stories. Faulkner’s story, “A Rose for Emily,” was told

The author states, “But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps¬- an eyesore among sores” (Faulkner 906). It explains that Emily is refusing to move forward and keeps living in the past. For instance, as society was evolving and becoming more modern she would refuse to pay taxes and receive newer mail services. Emily was exempt from paying taxes at the beginning of her father’s death as he lent the mayor a big amount of money. As a decade went by, they wanted her to resume her payments, and she would refuse to do so. In a way, Emily does not want to move forward into the new generation because she respects her father’s traditional morals and wishes. She does not want to tarnish his memory. Emily later starts dating a man who is new to town and is helping renovate the town, like paving the sidewalks. Homer Barron, her love interest, later gave the impression that they might get married. While homer is out of town, Emily buys rat poison and gives an impression to some towns people that she might try to commit suicide. Homer came back into town and disappeared with Emily in her house and was never seen again after. Faulkner says, “For a long while we stood there looking down at the profound and fleshless grin” (913). After Emily died, the towns

Emily has a black servant who gardens and cooks and doesn’t have much of a role in her life. A short time after her father died Homer Barron was introduced into her life; they are seen going on carriage rides on Sunday’s. Emily goes to buy Arsenic one day to kill “rats” and the town thinks she is going to kill herself, but in the end she poisoned Homer so he wouldn’t leave her like her father did. She then closed herself in her house and sheltered herself from the outside world until she died.

A woman, that has lived with pain in the recent years, has finally hit her lowest point in her life. Driven by love and depression, she murdered her husband, Homer Barron, because he did not love her back. Emily did indeed have a mental illness that drove her into disparity and isolation, and eventually lead her to murder her homosexual husband. The main reasons for this inference are embedded within the textual evidence in the story. Within the story we see her isolated from the townspeople, sleeping in her bed with the rotted corpse of her ex husband, and speech problems when the tax collectors converse with her at the emily estate.

Southern Gothic is a regional genre used in film, music, and literature that criticizes the moral blindness of a historical era. Traits of this genre include: disturbed personalities, macabre situation, and a list of themes. These specific themes are: Race, Unrequited Love, Good Versus Evil, Being an outsider, and Violence. In our class we read a selection of stories from many different southern gothic authors. A few of them are: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor, “Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. Other famous authors such as; Harper Lee, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams, have also composed southern gothic literature. These stories clearly portray southern gothic in the way it proves the moral blindness of the south and the hypocrisy they sometimes show.

Have you ever read a story filled with horror, death, and a little romance? In literature, stories with these characteristics are classified as gothic literature. For example "A Rose For Emily" by Emily Faulkner is Southern gothic literature as the setting is specific to the south while "The Cast of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe is gothic literature. In "A Rose for Emily", Emily and the community are stuck in the old ways of the South as they attempt to avoid the inevitable changes happening around them. In the end, Emily dies and the community is shocked to find her lovers body laying in her room. On the other hand, "The Cast of Amontillado" focuses on the protagonist revenge plot and death of the antagonist. An analysis of Poe 's and

There are two great qualities of Gothic stories first “A Rose For Emily” the second “Tell Tale-Heart” you must have heard of these stories before. In these two stories Emily and the unknown narrator are both messed up in the head they are mentally deranged. The two stories have different themes even though they have their similarities. Nothing good can come from evil deeds.

In the beginning the story starts by saying the whole town to Miss Emily’s funeral, only to show respect. Miss Emily was very attached to her father, when he passed away she just couldn’t let him go and wouldn’t let the anyone take his corpse. Finally after three days of not letting anyone take her father’s corpse, the townspeople talked Miss Emily into letting them bury his corpse. Miss Emily was alone after her father’s death, she didn’t have any family in the town he lived in, or any friends, because she didn’t ever leave the house to talk to anyone. The only person she had left was her black servant that cooked, ran errands, cleaned for her, and anything else she needed done. Miss Emily inherited the house she and her father lived in, but now she had to pay taxes, and refused to because her father didn’t. The next generation was taking over the town around the time her father died. As long as he was alive he didn’t have to pay the land or house taxes, because he loaned money to

It begins with a funeral that everyone is the town is attending because of the death of Mr. Grierson the father of Miss Emily, she refuses to acknowledge the death of her father. The towns older generation disapproved of Miss Emily dating Homer while the younger people doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, this shows that they was a change in how people were influences by their class and status thus signify that the older tradition of the South was fading away and the new tradition was taking over. Miss Emily’s tax requirement was suspended after her father’s death before a new Mayor unsuccessfully try to collected her taxes, which she refuses to paid it. The town discovered a powerful odor coming from Miss Emily’s house, Judge Steven

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner takes place a few years after the Civil War in a town called Jefferson. The action of the story is centered in Miss Emily's home. The narrator of the story is a townsperson who recalls Miss Emily’s life through a series of flashbacks. The story has many elements of Gothic because the themes of love lost, death, and murder are all present in it. Other elements that suggest about the Gothic nature of the story are Emily’s description, her house, the poison she bought, and ultimately the ending. Some aspects in the story deviate from the norm of Gothic literature because Emily and Homer can be perceived as a traditional love story that every Gothic has, but it follows another path of doom. Emily ends the love between her and Homer when she takes his life, which in return dooms her for a life without love and a life of isolation. “A Rose for Emily” emphasized larger implications of straying from the traditional elements such as marriage can lead to insanity and isolation.

Southern gothic literature is more of a dark and filled with violence type of story. An example is S-town. Stown is more of a contemporary piece of Southern gothic literature due to the fact of the twist of the story behind John B. Macklemore from Woodstock, Alabama. By the time a reader is done listening to this podcast, they should be able to take away a lot of different ideas from it. Some being how life in the South used to be. Not only that but also how it can relate to things now, but some events in S-town could also happen to this day. S-town shows a more recent form of a Southern gothic literature that brings things more to the 21 century. This podcast contains many different examples of characteristics that make it a Southern gothic, but it also has a bit of a different twist to most Southern gothics. S-town is a contemporary piece of southern gothic literature because of it’s use of macabre and grotesque, social issues, and the southern setting.