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Effect of society on literature
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In the novel, “Our Town”, Emily shows potential to be categorized as a main character. She is in all three acts unlike most other characters. Emily went through a huge emotional change throughout the book. She shows a few types of characterization including dynamic, and round. In Act I, Emily is still just the kid of the Webb family. She goes to school and goes about her regular day like a normal kid would. Emily Keeps up on her studies very well. She is known as the smartest and the brightest kid in her whole grade, which really doesn't have that many people attending. But she is still the smartest out of the few that actually go to the school. She is sixteen, so like most other girls around this age worry about the most minor things, and EMily worries most about her looks and beauty. Emily just takes things easy and doesn't worry about a lot of things, mostly just her school work and her looks. She help George Gibbs a lot with homework also, so she is caring towards him in Act I. So Emily is just the …show more content…
This causes for a big controversy between Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb and Emily and George. Act II shows that Emily is becoming a little bit more of a round and dynamic character by being able to try and get out there in the world a little bit. The two soon to be married kind of shape each other's characters by getting to know each other more and more and finally getting married. Emily evolves from a little sixteen year old girl that all she was worried about was her schoolwork and being pretty, and within three years she is already getting married to a boy from down the street of the little town of grover's Corners. Emily's parents and George's parents both tell their kids to wait a little while, but with then trying to split them up only makes them want to get married eve more. This goes to show that Emily is a determined person and her strong willed personality helps her change throughout the
She states that she was the only child, out of the five she has total, that was beautiful from the very moment she was born. Emily was smart, “She blew bubbles of sound. She loved motion, loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in the blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur.”(Olsen 291). When Emily was eight months old, she needed to stay with a woman downstairs while the narrator looked for a job. Eventually, the narrator had to send Emily to live with her father and his family until she has raised enough money for her fare back. Emily’s father had left because he was scared of becoming poor so her mother was not to happy with this decision. When the narrator finally raised the money for Emily to come home, she had gotten the chicken pox and had to stay home. Once she was healed, she returned immediately. The narrator barely recognizes Emily when comes home. She says she is thin and looks like her father and was now two years old. This means she is old enough to go into nursery school; in order for the narrator to keep her job, she needed to take Emily there. Emily did not like it though, the narrator says “She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick. Momma, I feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren’t there today, they’re sick”.(Olsen
She didn’t socialize much except for having her manservant Tobe visit to do some chores and go to the store for her. Faulkner depicts Emily and her family as a high social class. Emily did carry her self with dignity and people gave her that respect, based from fear of what Emily could do to them. Emily was a strong willed person especially when she went into the drug store for the arsenic.
Because of the way she is raised, Miss Emily sees herself as "high society," and looks down upon those who she thinks of as commoners. This places her under the harsh scrutiny of the townspeople who keep her under a watchful eye. The only others who see Miss Emily as she sees herself are the Mayor Colonel Sartoris, and Judge Stevens.
Having been the only daughter of a noble family, Emily was overprotected by her father who 'had driven away' all the young men wanting to be close to her. As a result of that, when she got to be thirty, she was still alone. It was Mr. Grierson who alienated his daughter from the normal life of a young woman. If she weren't born in the Grierson, if she didn?t have an upper-class father, she could get many relationships with many young men in order to find herself an ideal lover. Then she might have a happy marriage life with nice husband and children
Finally, Act three is the end of the day when Emily is dead and goes back for her twelfth birthday. The stage directions were simple and plain so you could use your imagination, kind of like a book. The stage manager was also a character in this play.
Emily father was highly favored in the town. Faulkner writes in his Short Story Criticism, “The Griersons have always been “high and mighty,” somehow above “the gross, teeming world….” Emily’s father was well respected and occasionally loaned the town money. That made her a wealthy child and she basically had everything a child wanted. Emily’s father was a very serious man and Emily’s mind was violated by her father’s strict mentality. After Emily’s father being the only man in her life, he dies and she find it hard to let go of him. Because of her father, she possessed a stubborn outlook on life and how thing should be. She practically secluded her self from society for the remainder of her life.
Miss Emily’s isolation is able to benefit her as well. She has the entire town believing she is a frail and weak woman, but she is very strong indeed. Everyone is convinced that she could not even hurt a fly, but instead she is capable a horrible crime, murder. Miss Emily’s actions range from eccentric to absurd. After the death of her father, and the estrangement from the Yankee, Homer Barron, she becomes reclusive and introverted. The reader can find that Miss Emily did what was necessary to keep her secret from the town. “Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (247).
At the beginning of the story Emily is just an ordinary little girl, but as the story continues she begins to feel herself changing. By the end of the story, Emily has gained self-consciousness and thinks of herself not as an ordinary little girl but as “Emily”.
Certainly, Emily is remarkably different in many ways due to a “troubled, lonely childhood” (Frye 288). She has a series of features that makes her unique. In terms of physical appearance, she is thin and dark looking because of health problems. As for personality she is insecure however behaves well and she does not show her emotions. Perhaps her complexity gives the idea or the impression that she needs help and people perceive her as a troubled girl.
As time goes on Emily grows up, her mother criticizes and blames herself for the distance between the relationships. It is causing tension in their already rocky relationship. The mother is obviously suffering from guilt on how Emily was raised and the unpleasant memories of the past. Emily was also suffering. We see her shyness towards those who care for her. She was a very depressed teen. She had quietness in her daily duties, and her feelings of not being good enough towards herself. She always felt that she was extremely ugly and not smart compared to her younger sister, Susan. She thought she was perfect. She was the typical “Shirley Temple” image.
Emily was an insecure girl who wanted in the club badly. Raising everyone’s eyebrows when they saw her. She was a mysterious little human being. She was helpless and needed someone desperately in the club to help her. She was associating with a rich kid in the club and was pregnant by him, but it was never stated who he was, leaving us to wonder who.
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...
Although I do not agree with how Miss Emily Grierson behaved, but I do not blame her. Harbored from reality her entire life I can expect for her to do some unordinary things. I feel bad for Miss Emily because she was the center of attention in a modernized town where she still practiced her traditional values. Through the eyes the townspeople we get our views of Emily at a distance. Had the story been told from Emily’s perspective we could better understand her reasoning for her bizarre behavior.
Emily did not enjoy the popularity and excitement of the public life, unlike her father. So she began to pull away from it. In the presence of strangers Emily could be shy, silent or even depreciating. Emily felt that she did not fit in with her and her father’s religion in Amherst especially when he father started to censor the books she read because of their potential to draw her away from faith.