A Good Man is Hard to Find and A Rose For Emily: Old Habits Die Hard A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor, and A Rose for Emily, by William Faulkner, are two stories that reveal how the internal character and values of two individuals have long term consequences for themselves and those around them. Both O’Connor’s and Faulkner’s stories take place in the Southern United States during times when society was changing from what it once was in the South. The main characters inability to adapt to societal changes and overcome pride and personal biases, results in internal and external conflicts for themselves and others. Unfortunately, these conflicts, coupled with their arrogance, also lead to isolation and loss for them both. In …show more content…
Ever since she was a child, Emily and her family have always looked upon themselves as “a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner 302). Both women are trapped products of a by gone era, yet both refuse to move past old, arrogant attitudes and biases. Regrettably, for both of them, this character trait follows them until the end of their lives. Even though the grandmother strains to bring herself down to the Misfit’s level at the end, it is only in an attempt to save herself. Emily, on the other hand, does the opposite, and makes no attempt at all to associate herself on the same level as the townsfolk of Jefferson. Eventually though, she dies alone and destitute as …show more content…
In both stories, these women thought of themselves as respectable women of high reputation and honor. However, their views and attitudes showed their true pride and contributed to the struggles and conflicts that they found within their lives and with those around them. In both women’s lives, the environment and culture around them had changed and progressed into something that neither of them had completely accepted. The former traditions and attitudes of the South that were firmly ingrained into both of them is expressed when the Grandmother states, “In my time...people did right” (O'Connor 407). This pretentious attitude by the Grandmother contributed to her relational conflicts within her own family, whereas Emily’s likeminded attitude about the past can be seen when she continually insists that, “I have no taxes in Jefferson” (Faulkner 300). Her rationale for claiming such things was based on her insistence that the town authorities “see Colonel Sartoris,” the man who had tolerated Emily and even dismissed her tax debts in the past (Faulkner 300). Yet, Colonel Sartoris has also been dead for over ten years. This overall mindset, much like the grandmother’s, contributed to Emily’s ongoing conflicts with and isolation from the residents of
To begin, Granny Weatherall is full of pride and has a need for control. In contrast, Miss Emily lives in a fantasy land and obstinate. Miss Emily and Granny Weatherall are traumatized woman who, like any person dealing with trauma have to find a way to deal with it. Their differing personality traits dictate how they do so. Granny Weatherall pushes away the hurt and Miss Emily denies it in favor of clinging to a fantasy. Granny Weatherall and Miss Emily may both have skeletons in their closets but what they have done with them is what separates the
Faulkner writes “A Rose for Emily” in the view of a memory, the people of the towns’ memory. The story goes back and forth like memories do and the reader is not exactly told whom the narrator is. This style of writing contributes to the notions Faulkner gives off during the story about Miss Emily’s past, present, and her refusal to modernize with the rest of her town. The town of Jefferson is at a turning point, embracing the more modern future while still at the edge of the past. Garages and cotton gins are replacing the elegant southern homes. Miss Emily herself is a living southern tradition. She stays the same over the years despite many changes in her community. Even though Miss Emily is a living monument, she is also seen as a burden to the town. Refusing to have numbers affixed to the side of her house when the town receives modern mail service and not paying her taxes, she is out of touch with reality. The younger generation of leaders brings in Homer’s company to pave the sidewalks. The past is not a faint glimmer but an ever-present, idealized realm. Emily’s morbid bridal ...
A common theme of southern gothic writer’s such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connell is the disparities of social norms and social stratification; this is apparent in both A Good Man is hard to find and A Rose for Emily. Both portray interplay across generations which manifest itself as resistance of change in previous generations. The grandmother in A Good Man is Hard to Find and Emily in A Rose for Emily are largely parallel to one another in respect to the themes of the stories. Through subservient motifs as privilege, nostalgia, and irony the overarching theme of death is effectually portrayed in both A Good Man is Hard to Find and A Rose for Emily.
William Faulkner and Flannery O’ Conner both have mischievous and morbid characteristics. In Flannery O’Conner’s story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, the main focus is that the grandma is old fashioned and uses this to her advantage in telling stories and trying not to get killed. In William Faulkner’s story, A Rose for Emily, it focuses on Emily who is also old fashioned but can’t get with the present time and keeps holding onto the past. Both have morbid endings because of their lack of letting go on past events, and use their archaic habits in different ways. In A Rose for Emily, Emily shows multiple signs of not liking change by denying her father’s death, not leaving the house and in A Good Man Is Hard to Find; the grandmother portrays the right way of being a lady, and her jokes associating with the plantation and the Negro child.
She is portrayed throughout the story as a hermit, only being seen outside her home a handful of times. In the beginning of the story, Miss Emily refuses to pay her taxes as she denies she has any taxes to pay. “ ‘See Colonel Sartoris.’ (Colonel Sartoris has been dead almost ten years.) ‘I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!’ The Negro appeared. ‘Show these gentlemen out.’ (Faulkner 31)” She believes that she is responsible for no taxes, as the Colonel stated that her father had lent money to the town years ago; however the townspeople still arrive at her home to collect the taxes. She tells them to ask the Colonel, though he has been dead for almost ten years. She refuses to acknowledge the reality around
The protagonist of this story is Miss Emily Grierson, an old maid spinster without family who becomes a “tradition” and a “sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 299). The story begins with the death of Miss Emily, so I will rearrange my analysis of the character to begin with what we first know about Miss Emily.
The end of the American Civil War also signified the end of the Old South's era of greatness. The south is depicted in many stories of Faulkner as a region where "the reality and myth are difficult to separate"(Unger 54). Many southern people refused to accept that their conditions had changed, even though they had bitterly realized that the old days were gone. They kept and cherished the precious memories, and in a fatal and pathetic attempt to maintain the glory of the South people tend to cling to old values, customs, and the faded, but glorified representatives of the past. Miss Emily was one of those selected representatives. The people in the southern small-town, where the story takes place, put her on a throne instead of throwing her in jail where she actually belonged. The folks in town, unconsciously manipulated by their strong nostalgia, became the accomplices of the obscene and insane Miss Emily.
William Faulkner used indirect characterization to portray Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted women through the serious of events that happened throughout her lifetime. The author cleverly achieves this by mentioning her father’s death, Homer’s disappearance, the town’s taxes, and Emily’s reactions to all of these events. Emily’s reactions are what allowed the readers to portray her characteristics, as Faulkner would want her to be
In the end the greatest downfall is the grandmother trying to save her own life through shallow
Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...
On the one hand, all aristocratic, well bread southern ladies are married but on the other, Miss Emily believes she will relinquish what control of her life that she has gained by her father’s death. It is as if she is in a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation that the town and generation after generation has trapped her. She wasn’t going to have another lover walk out her life, so she poisoned Homer Barron before he had the chance to leave as no well bread southern woman is divorced. Faulkner used the evolving town to isolate Miss Emily as she portrays the aristocratic south, unable to move beyond the antebellum past to reach the future until