Essays on Townsfolk

Glaucon is depicted in Book II of “The Republic” (Plato) as a philosopher concerned with the value of justice. He wishes to decide if it is worth being a just person just for the sake of justice. He argues that there is no reason to prevent a person from behaving in an unjust manner if that person can get away with it – in other words if someone can reap the rewards of wrong behavior, but not deal with the consequences of their actions. The Man without a Face (1993) tells us of a McLeod, a man who was involved ...

A Rose for Emily constitute the crucial part of Faulkner's art. Analyzing the plot, background, and chronological order it becomes clear that Faulkner managed to develop his own manner of novelistic narration. The short stories of the writer were equally popular as his novels, and such stories as A Rose for Emily were widely appraised by critics and shared the most revered places among the representatives of the «big» genre. Indeed, by determining Faulkner's contribution to world literature, many English-speaking critics underlined that the writer's genius manifested itself in both genres, despite the complexity of the style that he ...

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Essay on the short story “A Rose for Emily”

William Faulkner wrote this little piece of gem in 1930.Based in the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, the story chronicles the life of Emily Grierson, a lady who lived a tragic life unbeknownst to others living in the same town. The author stated that he would give her a rose just to provide his sympathy, and that is where the title of the story originated. The story encompasses the whole life of a spinster, her issues, her ego, her yearning for love, her vanity, her limitations in difficult times, and most importantly her conditions to live life on her own terms, no ...

Latin American autochthonous mystery fiction happens to be a rarity, although Americans readers have avidly devoured plenty of translations of foreign whodunits or detective stories. Thus, “Who Killed Palomino Molero?” by Mario Vargas Llosa is an archetypal example of a non-English detective novel, written after the Latin American Literary Boom of the 1960s. However, Llosa happens to have quite a neat and skillful hand at detective fiction, has proven from the previous novels that he has written, such as “'The Perpetual Orgy.” On the surface, it seems that Llosa fulfills the requirements of the detective fiction genre, his novel moving at a slow ...

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a short story about Emily Grierson, the main character whose life was a manifestation of an intriguing evolution from solitary destitute to latent madness. The story actually begun with Emily’s demise and told from an unknown narrator’s perspective; possibly a local member of the community or town where Emily resided. From the initial description, the image of Emily that was relayed included her living a reclusive life where no one, except her servant, was accorded the opportunity to be included. The story actually reveals that a woman descents into madness or hidden embodiment of ...

Rick Bass’s short story Antlers is about much more than just the ethics of hunting, and even though its plot is vague, the story is still rich with symbolic meaning. In the story, Bass provides a glimpse of the life of a group of people, living in a small, secluded town. Bass’s story is an example of how humanity has rejected and lost its primal roots, and how confused it gets when interacting with the last remnants of animal instincts. There came a time when human beings came up with the idea that they are distinct and at a higher status than ...

Did emily kill homer?

In “A Rose for Emily,” lonely spinster Emily Grierson kills her discreet and distant lover Homer Barron, a murder that is revealed only long after the fact to the town in which she lives, shocking its residents. The reasons are never explicitly mentioned in the story, but the isolated environment of the town, the townsfolk's poor and judgmental treatment of Emily, and Homer's own ambivalence toward his relationship with Emily all drive her to kill. Death is a persistent symbol throughout the story - tracing the steps back throughout the town to determine just what led to ...

Section 1: Bibliographic Data - Works Cited

Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1970. Print.Section 2: Summary In “A Rose for Emily,” lonely spinster Emily Grierson kills her discreet and distant lover Homer Barron, a murder that is revealed only long after the fact to the town in which she lives, shocking its residents. The reasons are never explicitly mentioned in the story, but the isolated environment of the town, the townsfolk's poor and judgmental treatment of Emily, and Homer's own ambivalence toward his relationship with Emily all drive her to kill. The story is told through the collective consciousness of the town, ...

The fractured chronology in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” in addition to the skewed perspective that comes from having the townspeople as a whole become the narrators of the short story, lends the short story an air of mystery and suspense that adds to the Gothic horror atmosphere Faulkner has created. Constantly giving the audience clues as to the eventual twist at the end of the story keeps the audience reading, and the lack of information the rest of the townsfolk have allows the audience to be just as much in the dark of the situation until the ...

1. Name three instances of social injustice in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”.

This short story presents a situation of inequality among social classes. The story suggests that privilege must come from the suffering of others. A child lives in an abusive, isolated setting as opposed to the prosperous townsfolk. The child in the story is a metaphor for ethical dilemma. The child is abuse and neglected for the benefit of others. The child had its humanity stripped away by these citizens. Called only “it” this child is representative of the downtrodden in society. Social conditioning led ...

In “A Rose for Emily,” lonely spinster Emily Grierson kills her discreet and distant lover Homer Barron, a murder that is revealed only long after the fact to the town in which she lives, shocking its residents. The reasons are never explicitly mentioned in the story, but the isolated environment of the town, the townsfolk's poor and judgmental treatment of Emily, and Homer's own ambivalence toward his relationship with Emily all drive her to kill. Death is a persistent symbol throughout the story - tracing the steps back throughout the town to determine just what led to Emily's death. The reason ...

In ‘A Rose for Emily’ the central character is arguably the narrator. William Faulkner uses ‘we’ – the first person plural - to tell the story, and this anonymous narrator is the town itself almost telling us the dramatic events of Emily Grierson’s life. There is only a single very important moment when Faulkner changes for deliberate effect from ‘we’ to ‘they.’ Overall, when we come to the conclusion of the story, we understand that Faulkner uses this highly unusual and little-used narrative device to mock the townsfolk and to condemn the attitudes of the citizens. Emily Grierson lives ...

In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the story is told through the collective consciousness of the town, acting as a narrator that constantly switches between events and events. Gossip is the means by which the combined information about Emily is disseminated throughout the town; this adds an air of mystery to the woman, as everyone wonders about her relationship with Homer. By the time the townspeople happen upon Homer’s body, they certainly learn that, but in the meantime, all they can do is speculate. Faulkner expresses this speculation and fascination with Emily’s activities by having the narration ...

INTRODUCTION

In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily Grierson is a lonely spinster, living on the fringes of the small town of Jackson, whose inhabitants constantly judge her for her loneliness. As a result, she begins to become somewhat eccentric, exacting her own brand of reality in her own home. After clearly becoming infatuated with a new man in town who spends a lot of time with her, the townspeople continue to gossip and scrutinize her every action, which become increasingly strange as time passes. Finally unlocking Emily’s home after her death, the town is faced with a brutal, horrifying truth that had long been ...

Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” both feature complex relationships between spouses – particularly, that the women are victimized by their husbands to both subtle and overt extents. While Gilman’s narrator is a frustrated, confused individual who is locked up by her husband while failing to blame him, Delia in “Sweat” is a more determined, sane and vengeful individual, her constant victimization leading her to dramatic action (or inaction) that leads to disastrous consequences for her husband Sykes. What’s more, in “Sweat” we hear from Sykes’ perspective as well, learning both sides ...

Because of the society she lives in, Hester’s enforced wearing of the scarlet letter is intended to be a punishment, an admonition by the puritan New England society she lives in, but as the novel proceeds the effect on Hester is not what her society expected and the letter itself comes to stand for things other than ‘Adulteress’. This paper will argue that the effect of the letter on Hester is, by the end of the novel, to make her as accepted member of society again and that the scarlet letter is not effective in the way it was ...