Effect of Learned Human Interaction Shown in Stalking and A Rose for Emily

How much of what we learn as younglings affect us as we get older? This question is answered in the literary works of “Stalking” by Joyce Carol Oates and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. Both authors attempt to explain this by using their main characters, Oates’ Gretchen and Faulkner’s Miss Emily Grierson. Gretchen and Miss Emily use different ways to cope with their problems. Gretchen uses her invisible adversary and Miss Emily uses Homer, even after she has killed him. They do not have the best social skills and in trying to interact with people they show how socially inept they are. Gretchen mumbles or completely ignores others. Miss Emily, while polite, simply dismisses the town authorities on two separate occasions. Both characters have been cut off from the regular world. Gretchen has been ignored by her parents; Miss Emily is blocked off from normal human interaction by her father. While both characters go about dealing with their loneliness, and interact with people in different ways, they support the idea that the way we are taught how to behave socially, affects us for the rest of our lives.

Gretchen and Miss Emily both created their own contact with another human figure. Gretchen created an invisible adversary that she stalked through her new town. “Gretchen, walking slowly, deliberately, watches with her keen unblinking eyes the figure of the Invisible Adversary some distance ahead” (Oates 188). Though she created this humanoid in her mind, it does not help with her inability to create normal human relations, without knowing, she pushed herself further into seclusion. Gretchen is also in a new town. “But the gas station has not opened since Gretchen and her family moved here—about six months ago” (Oates 189)....

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...cial personalities have made almost a full circle. Both try to create a relationship with something they cannot truly connect with. Gretchen created her Invisible Adversary while Miss Emily tried to keep the dead body of her father and later the body of Homer Barron in her home. There is a difference in the communication skills of the two ladies, Gretchen tries to ignore as much as she can and Miss Emily politely sends people away. Even with this, Miss Emily is a possible look into what the future has in store for young Gretchen.

Works Cited

Oates, Joyce Carol “Stalking.” Discovering Literature. ED. Guth, Hans and Gabriele Rico. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Prentice Hall. 1991. 187-193. Print.

Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Discovering Literature. ED. Guth, Hans and Gabriele Rico. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Prentice Hall. 1991. 165-172. Print.