"Araby" and "A Rose for Emily"

Paper Summary:

In this paper, the author looks at two contrasting styles of writing in the short stories, "Araby" by James Joyce and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. The paper points out that the authors of both books come from very different backgrounds. Joyce is of Irish descent and Faulkner is a true American. Yet, the author tells us, despite these different backgrounds there are similarities in the short stories that each wrote. One of the most obvious similarities between the two works is clearly the element of their plots that deal so predominantly with death. The paper points out that, despite the stories being set in different locations, they are both reflective of their author's respective backgrounds, Irish and American. The author concludes that, in his opinion, because both Joyce and Faulkner write from personal perspectives, their works are actually quite similar to one another.

From the Paper:

"Furthermore, there is also symbolism in Miss Emily's preservation of the dead, in memory if not literally. "See Colonel Sartoris," she tells the new town fathers, as if he were alive. The townspeople are also like Miss Emily in that they persist in preserving her "dignity" as the last representative of the Old South (her death ends the Grierson line); after she is dead, the narrator preserves her in this story. Finally, the rose is a symbol of the age of romance in which the aristocracy was obsessed with delusions of grandeur, pure women being a symbol of the ideal in every phase of life. Ultimately, the narrator offers the entire story as a "rose" for Emily: As a lady might press a rose between the pages of a history of the South, she keeps her own personal rose, her lover, preserved in the bridal chamber where a rose color pervades everything. Miss Emily's rose is especially ironically symbolic because her lover was a modern Yankee, whose laughter drew the townspeople to him and whose corpse has grinned "profoundly" for forty years, as if he, or Miss Emily, had played a joke on all of them."

More papers on "Araby" and "A Rose for Emily":

• Analytical Essay # 148332 : "Trifles" and "A Rose for Emily"
• Analytical Essay # 7678 : "The Birth Mark" and "A Rose For Emily"
• Analytical Essay # 136449 : "Emily and "A Rose For Emily"

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