A Rose For Emily Setting Analysis

What makes a story so fascinating? What draws people attention to read? The elements of setting, point of view and the characteristics of the character of the stories could make the story become more interesting for readers to read. There are a lot of comparison and contrast in the story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Why I lived at the P.O” by Eudora Welty. The similarities and differences that I will be discussing in this essay will be about the setting, point of view and the dominant characteristic of the protagonist. Even though the settings in both of the stories are similar, the differences in the point of view and character characteristic create a very different story. “A Rose for Emily” is told by a group people with each of their own ideas and a third person narrator, whereas in “Why I lived in the P.O” the story is told by a first person female narrator.

The setting of both stories takes place in a small town in the south during the early 1900’s. From the information that we get from the story, we can conclude that the story happened in a

very old and Southern American society, which can be seen in the story “A Rose for Emily.” There, the main setting of the story takes place in a small populated county. The protagonist of the story, Emily, was avoiding to pay tax to the county because her father has talked about it to a former mayor of Jefferson, Colonel Sartoris and they agreed that her family doesn’t need to pay tax anymore. Emily said “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.” (Faulkner 2). This shows that her father has authority to make his family from paying tax. But when her father died, Emily was asked to pay for the taxes by the townsperson, but she refuses because she think her father has already take care of it. Every time Emily was asked to pay tax, the person who asked for the money was told to go away by Emily.
In addition, the same thing also happened in the story “Why I lived at the P.O.” The protagonist, Sister is working at a post office. She could get her job as the postmistress because of her father’s influences with the government. Her father said “Which job I got you through my influence with the government. ‘Bird’s nest'—is that what you call it?"” (Welty 2). Sister’s father also has the power to get her the job. Her father influences the government so that her daughter could work at the post office which is a government job. To get accepted in a government job is quite tough and because of her father influences, Sister was able to get the job.
The authority that both of their fathers have, represent the old South American. The old Southern America used to have a tradition which is: a person who is rich/ important have a power to control something. Emily’s father was rich and so he could negotiate with the mayor so that her family doesn’t need to pay tax. And so the same with Sister’s father, he is an important person in town which is why he could influence the government to give the Postmistress job to her daughter.
The point of view in the story “A Rose for Emily” is from the city’s spokesperson which is in the third person view.

We know this because the narrator is using “We.” We were only hearing the story about Emily from the gossip of the citizens, and this also makes us question the reliability of the narrator. The spokesperson said “We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something” (Faulkner 3). The narrator only provide the story from the side of the spokesperson and not the side from Emily. But by telling the story in a third person and hearing the story only from the spokesperson, this makes the reader slowly get the image of Miss Emily by our self without being forced by the narrator. The spokesperson doesn’t provoke us to hate or love Miss Emily but they also don’t give us a reliable and precise information about Miss

Emily.
However the point of view on the story “Why I lived at the P.O” is from the Sister’s point of view which is a first person. We could know that it is in a first person point because the narrator keep on using the word “I” to refer to herself. From the beginning of the story, Sister is busily blaming most of her discomfort and anguish on Stella-Rondo’s sudden return to the family house. Sister said “I was getting along fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again” (Welty 1). She doesn’t like the existence of Stella Rondo in the house and she keeps on telling us that her family was not on her side but on Stella Rondo’s side. We were only listening to one side of the story, which is from the side of Sister. She tell the story of her side only and it seems like she was provoking us to also hate Stella Rondo.
Both of the narrators have a different Point of view, in the story “Why I lived in the P.O” the narrator Sister is gossiping about her family and her own life. She is busily gossiping about her sister who has an adopted child which she didn’t believe and also she feel alienated by her own family because Stella Rondo was provoking her family to hate Sister. But in the story “A Rose for Emily” the narrator was the one who was being gossiped by the spokesperson. They were gossiping about the love life of Emily and Homer.
In the story “A Rose for Emily” the protagonist, Emily, is more of a private lady who likes to keep her life private from anyone else. The narrator said “After her father's death she went out very little” (Faulkner 2). She is an introvert who doesn’t like to go out and socialize with her neighbors which makes her secluded and doesn’t know what is happening around her. Emily came from a rich and entitled family and she also own a luxury house on a well-known street. Her father is also one of the respected man in town because her father had loaned money to the town.
While on the other hand, the protagonist of the story “Why I lived at the P.O”, Sister is a very sociable person who is very talkative and likes to talk with anyone. She is also the postmistress in state of Mississippi and because post office was the gathering place back then, she knew what other people’s occupation, status and etc. Sister said “But here I am, and here I'll stay. I want the world to know I'm happy” (Welty 8). She would share all the information that she knows with other people and make it the subject of their gossip. And what she meant by “I want the world to know I'm happy” is that she wants to talk and blather to other people and told her feelings about what she did to her family to other people.
Both of the characters have very different characteristic. Emily is a very introvert person, while Sister is an extrovert who is very talkative and do gossip about anything with anyone even though it is about her private live. Whereas Emily, she is a very lonely and miserable character who mostly spend her time in her house and doesn’t talk with anybody.
To sum it up both the author were writing the story in a different point of view. In “Why I lived in the P.O”, it is written in first point of view, while in the story “Rose for Emily” it is written in third person point of view. Usually the story which use a first person point of view want to show a specific character or attempts to persuade, which we can see clearly in the story “Why I lived in the P.O,” the main character is persuading us to also hate Stella Rondo. Also by using the first person point of view, the reader could get more details about the setting of the story because the protagonist is able to show the key terms and explain through her actions and feelings about the setting. Which is why in the story “Why I lived in the P.O,” we could get a lot of details from the narrator because she is showing a lot of key terms to the reader about the ambiance of her family. Whereas in the story “A rose for Emily,” the narrator is written in the third point of view. The author choses to use the third point of view because it is subjective and could give the reader an immediate sense of what the character feel and think. Which is proven in the story “A rose for Emily” where we could know what Emily, Tobe and the spokesperson feel and think in the story.