Compare And Contrast Barn Burning And A Rose For Emily By William Faulkner

William Faulkner lived from 1897- 1962, during this time he wrote many amazing novels and short stories that are still relevant to this day. Of his many short stories the ones being analyzed for their theme, characterization and style are “Barn Burning” and “A Rose for Emily”. These 2 short stories are good representation of Faulkner’s writing techniques as well as represent him as an author. Faulkner grew up in an area in Mississippi and attended the University of Mississippi. After he did various jobs until he started his writing career. During the time these were written Faulkner had shut himself into his home in Oxford, Mississippi becoming a recluse. This was how the majority of his writing career was spent and is why his stories are about

Unable to admit to her father’s death, followed by months of people thinking she was planning to commit suicide. Then it tells the reader about the man she had been seen with homer, eventually he disappears too, suspected he had fled town. You find that she was ultimately just a special sort of crazy, after her death they found homers dead body lying on the bed. “A Rose for Emily” is all about isolation and different views on reality, shown by her actions. In “A Rose for Emily” the theme isolation is pretty resounding, while young she wasn’t but after her father’s death she became increasingly estranged from the entire town. Emily is not only physically but mentally isolated. For the different views on society, this is the idea of normal for Emily is different from the view of normal from everyone else’s. Throughout Emily does not seem to get a grip on time or any kind of change everyone else sees. On page 731, “’See Colonel Sartoris’ (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) ‘I have no taxes in Jefferson’” (Faulkner). This shows her complete disconnect with time. The themes in “A Rose for Emily”

The style, themes and characterization he uses while writing “Barn Burning” and “A Rose for Emily” were very interesting. The style follows the typical flow for Faulkner stories, lots of uses of the flow of conciseness as well as many long descriptions. Faulkner’s characterization was very interesting because of his ability to create such deep characters through a completely different plot, but ideologically similar in face of adversity. The themes in these were deep, developing such meaningful themes through a short story is tough but he manages to do tough ones such as isolation and loyalty in the 2 stories. Faulkner really is an amazing author who manages to use these different writing facets to the best of their ability though he once said during this time of his life he was writing “deliberately to make money”