A Rose For Miss Emily Death Analysis

in the short stories a Rose for Miss Emily, the Lottery and the drama Before Breakfast there is one theme they all have in common, death. People handle death in their own way some mourn for the loss of a loved one others fear death even if it’s for the benefit of others and some even take their own lives to escape a miserable life on this earth. Only by watching people and how they react to death is the only way of knowing how certain people handle death. In these three stories the author uses diction to display the human condition, shock of death.

In “a Rose for Miss Emily” by William Faulkner the shock of death was when miss Emily wouldn’t let her father leave the house after he died this is because of the shock of her father’s death pushed

her into denial Faulkner proves this in his story when he writes “Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly”. (Faulkner 98) After her father’s burial her denial of her father’s death turned into a desire for someone who wouldn’t leave her this belief set the stage for the rest of the story and killed homer and slept with the body that “apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace. (Faulkner 100)
In Shirley Jacksons “the lottery” death was seen as a good thing a public event to sacrifice one for the betterment of others but when miss. Hutchison draws the card with the black dot meaning she’s the one being sacrificed she says “I think we ought to start over, Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. I tell you it wasn’t fair. You didn’t give him enough time to choose everyone saw that.” (Jackson 143) Jackson uses diction to show that even in a society where people give “little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles” (Jackson 144) to throw at his own mom the human emotion of shock of death sends miss Hutchison into a panic that even makes her try to get her daughters who are married to draw with her so she will have better odds to survive.
In Eugene O’Neill’s drama “Before Breakfast” Alfred cuts his own throat after years of excessive drinking and constant nagging from his wife. O’Neill uses diction to show the terror Mrs. Rowland feels when she yells out “Alfred! Alfred! Answer me! What is it you knocked over? Are you still drunk? [Unable to stand the tension a second longer she rushes to the door of the bedroom] Alfred!” (O’Neill 1011) then since this is a drama he uses diction to tell us what the actor playing Mrs. Rowland is doing, after “She stands in the doorway looking down at the floor of the inner room, transfixed with horror. Then she shrieks wildly and runs to the other door, unlocks it and frenziedly pulls it open, and runs shrieking madly into the hallway.” (O’Neill 1011) this is Mrs. Rowlands reaction to the shock of death and I must admit it’s not the reaction I would expect from a woman who doesn’t seem to even care for Alfred.
So in conclusion the authors use diction to display the human condition shock to show how people act when confronted with death whether it’s a daughter mourning her father, a wife and mother killed for the greater good of the community or a man who is just tired of it all and wants a way out. Death may or may not be a good thing for the person who dies but there is always one person who mourns the death of a person.