A Rose for Emily

1) I had completely forgotten about this story because I hadn't read it since my sophomore year of high school. And even then, I'm not 100% sure if I read the entire thing. There were two words that stuck out to me the most because I remember my teacher beating their definitions into my head. "Macabre" and "Cuckold". I remember these words so distinctly because their meanings added such another depth to the story. I remember after learning the meaning of "macabre" I thought it was such a dramatic word for a short story. Almost too dramatic for the story. Going by definition I just didn't understand why the old ladies at the funeral were described as if they were making hissing noises (sibilant) and gruesome. Did I miss the point? I just don't know.

2) The author foreshadows the ending of the stories in a few ways. First of all, the reader can already tell that there is something a little different about Miss Emily because she has no concept of time. She has no idea that so much time has gone by since Colonel Sartoris has passed on. She has no concept of the generations changing or the times changing with them. There is also the foreshadowing of the death of Homer Barron. The foreshadowing of his death is when she is in the store buying the poison and refuses to tell the druggist what it's for. But even moreso than that, when she opens the box, it is labeled "For rats". This is alluding to Mr. Barron and his scandelous way of living, because Emily, being an Episcopal, would clearly think that his lifestyle choice is disgusting, like a rat, therefore he must die, like a rat. Although the title does not specify what color the "Rose for Emily" is, when researched, the meaning of a rose, especially a single rose, is love. Throughout the entire story, Faulkner strings in the fact that the entire town wants Emily to get married, they want her to be with someone. So from the beginning, the reader gets the impression that there may be a happy ending for her, that she may find her love. Unfortunately, she found her love, he just didn't love her back. Therefore she had to force him into a state of submission where her love could be actualized, even if it meant she had to lay with a dead man.

The Yellow Wallpaper

1) Insanity. Literally. That whole short story EMBODIES what it means to be insane. I remember reading that story my sophomore year of high school, but I DO NOT remember it being THAT...loco....for lack of a better term. I could say 'crazy' cause it means the same thing...but lets be real...everything is more dramatic when you say it in spanish...ANYWAY. The part I found most facinating was at how good the writer was at capturing the processes of the main character. It wasn't about an outsider looking in, she literally dug into the depths of her mind and extracted all of those emotions...all the way to the point of her cracking at the end.

2) In this piece, Gilman lays herself all out, vulnerable for the world to see. In an interview regarding her reasoning for writing this piece, she says that it relates to a point in her life where she was actually put on bed rest for "melencholia". Then when that bed rest attempt caused her to eventually go into a deeper state of dementia, she began writing, and that was what saved her inevitably. So not only does she reveal this deep, twisted, complex mind of this narrator, she shows how the narrator gets there. In the beginning of the piece it is easy for the reader to trust what the narrator is saying because one only assumes that she is sick and on bed rest. Her husband, a physician, doesn't believe she is sick, but she contradicts him and says that it is a nervous depression. He also encourages her to not swell on her condition as to not make it worse. This drives her to dwell more and as the story progresses, and she spends more time in solitude, the reader can see her fall deeper and deeper into her hallucinations. The reader can see her screws coming loose towards the beginning of the story where she interrupts herself with random thoughts, in her journal. Then she starts speaking about "us" going downstairs, instead of just herself. Since she is the only one in the room, there is no reason why she should speak in plural forms. As the story progresses, her condition worses rapidly, and then abruptly ends after she's cracked and her husband finds her. Not only does he find her, but what he finds is so disturbing that it causes him to faint. Over the course of narrative, the reader can see that the speaker has slowly transformed into the lady in the wall paper, and that has driven her to sheer and complete madness.