American literature styles are constantly changing, from the popular naturalism and realism genres to the newer concept of modernism. Many of these short stories and novels are based on historical events that occurred during the author’s lifetime. Both F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner use life experiences to frame their writings. They create realistic characters that deal with the same challenges the author went through. The authors show main areas of struggle through the stories “Babylon Revisited” and “A Rose for Emily.” Both of these literary works look into how each story’s main character deals and adapts to the concept of change based on the time in history and the values each character holds.
Fitzgerald, author of “Babylon Revisited”, lives a life filled with partying, drinking, and success which he incorporates into many of his novels and short stories. The author uses many of his own life experiences to shape the characters in his writing. James Kelly, author of “Tween-Lost Folk”, writes that
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Faulkner lives the majority of his life looking back and remembering the past, similar to Emily’s lifestyle in “A Rose for Emily”. Tracey Matthews, author of “Introduction to Faulkner, William (1897-1962)”, writes that “many of Faulkner’s novels and short stories are set in Yoknapatawha County, a fictional area reflecting the geographical and cultural background of his native Mississippi” (104). Never forgetting his home state of Mississippi, Faulkner loves to create fictional characters that live in a made up town in the south. This short story about insecurity and longing bring alive Faulkner’s passion for writing about obsessions. The author embraces modernistic literature in “A Rose for Emily” by exhibiting a changing community leaving many traditions as a thing of the
"William Faulkner: The Faded Rose of Emily." Mr. Renaissance. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2011 .
William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Feature bold experimentation with shifts in time and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including "A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner 's fictional Yoknapatawpha
In "Babylon Revisited," Fitzgerald uses these troubled times as a background for his story. The main character is someone many Americans of the day could sympathize with. His rise from mediocrity to a life of wealth and leisure and then his tragic fall appealed to the broken and world-weary masses subjugated by the demoralizing affects of the depression.
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
Fitzgerald's book at first overwhelms the reader with poetic descriptions of human feelings, of landscapes, buildings and colors. Everything seems to have a symbolic meaning, but it seems to be so strong that no one really tries to look what's happening behind those beautiful words. If you dig deeper you will discover that hidden beneath those near-lyrics are blatancies, at best.
Unbeknownst to the literary world, a future great American novelist, Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896. As an intellectual young man with great ambition, F. Scott Fitzgerald attended Princeton in the fall of 1913 with great hopes of fulfilling his dream to become a writer (“F. Scott Fitzgerald – Bio”, 2015). Unfortunately, Fitzgerald did not find much success at Princeton, was put on academic probation, and in 1917 left the school and enlisted himself into the U.S Army. During his time spent on base in Alabama, Fitzgerald met a woman, Zelda Sayre, and fell in love. Following his discharge at the end of the war, Fitzgerald and Zelda moved to Great Neck, New York on Long Island to pursue his literary aspirations
William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! feature bold experimentation with shifts in time and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including "A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, tells a series of stories about the town's reclusive spinster, Miss Emily Grierson. The stories build up to a gruesome revelation after Miss Emily's funeral. She apparently poisoned her lover, Homer Barron, and kept his corpse in an attic bedroom for over forty years. It is a common critical cliche to say that a story "exists on many levels." In the case of "A Rose for Emily", this is the truth. Critic Frank A. Littler, in an essay published in Notes on Mississippi Writers regarding the chronology of the story, writes that "A Rose for Emily" has been read variously as ". . .a Gothic horror tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations between North and South, a meditation on the nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine." These various interpretations serve as a good starting point for discussion of the story.
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” Miss Emily Grierson holds on to the past with a grip of death. Miss Emily seems to reside in her own world, untarnished by the present time around her, maintaining her homestead as it was when her father was alive. Miss Emily’s father, the manservant, the townspeople, and even the house she lives in, shows that she remains stuck in the past incapable and perhaps reluctant to face the present.
In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the complex tale of a woman who is battered by time and unable to move through life after the loss of each significant male figure in her life. Unlike Disney Stories, there is no prince charming to rescue fallen princess, and her assumed misery becomes the subject of everyone in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the townspeople gossip about her and develop various scenarios to account for her behaviors and the unknown details of her life, Emily Grierson serves as a scapegoat for the lower classes to validate their lives. In telling this story, Faulkner decides to take an unusual approach; he utilizes a narrator to convey the details of a first-person tale, by examining chronology, the role of the narrator and the interpretations of “A Rose for Emily”, it can be seen that this story is impossible to tell without a narrator.
Tolmatchoff, V. M. "The Metaphor of History in the Work of F. Scott Fitzgerald." Russian Eyes on American Literature. Ed. Sergei Chakovsky and M. Thomas Inge. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. 126-141. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 280. Detroit: Gale, 2013. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
In many of Faulkner’s stories, he tells about an imaginary county in Mississippi named Yoknapatawpha. He uses this county as the setting for his story “Barn Burning” and it is also thought that the town of Jefferson from “A Rose for Emily” is located in Yoknapatawpha County. The story of a boy’s struggle between being loyal to his family or to his community makes “Barn Burning” exciting and dramatic, but a sense of awkwardness and unpleasantness arrives from the story of how the fictional town of Jefferson discovers that its long time resident, Emily Grierson, has been sleeping with the corpse of her long-dead friend with whom she has had a relationship with.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Shorter 5th ed. Ed. R.V.Cassill. New York: W.W. Norton & Comp., 1995.
In Faulkner’s tale “A Rose for Emily” there are many historical elements throughout the story; Faulkner uses them to give an authentic feel to the story and to add to the setting. A recurring theme that I found was reference to the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. The setting of the South after their demise in the Civil War adds character to the story and to the characters. The attitudes people had and the way people treated Emily with respect was a tradition of the “Old South” that is presented throughout this tale.
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, though both evolved from the same literary time and place, created their works in two very dissimilar writing styles which are representative of their subject matter. The two writers were both products of the post-WWI lost generation and first gained notoriety as members of the American expatriate literary community living in Paris during the 1920's. Despite this underlying fact which influenced much of their material, the works examined in class dramatically differ in style as well as subject matter. As far as style, Fitzgerald definitely takes the award for eloquence with his flowery descriptive language whereas Hemingway's genius comes from his short, simple sentences. As for subject, Hemingway writes gritty, earthy material while on the other hand Fitzgerald's writing is centered around social hierarchy and longing to be with another person. Although the works that these two literary masters are so uniquely different, one thing that they have in common are their melancholy and often tragic conclusions.
“A Tale Intended to be After the Fact…” is how Stephan Crane introduced his harrowing story, “The Open Boat,” but this statement also shows that history influences American Literature. Throughout history, there has been a connection among literary works from different periods. The connection is that History, current events, and social events have influenced American Literature. Authors, their literary works, and the specific writing styles; are affected and influenced by the world around them. Authors have long used experiences they have lived through and/or taken out of history to help shape and express in their works. Writing styles are also affected by the current trends and opinions of the period they represent. By reading American Literature, we have seen the inhumane treatment of slaves, we have seen the destruction caused by wars, and we have seen the devastation of eras such as The Great Depression.