Time Capsule

I would choose “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner and “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason to be put in a time capsule to be unearthed 100 years from now. Because “A Rose For Emily” was written in 1930, and “Shiloh” was written in 1982, I think that considering the two stories side by side would provide an interesting contrast between lifestyles of the early and late 20th century. By comparing setting and characterization in these two stories, people 100 years from now could get a feel for some of the things that have changed during the course of the 20th century and some of the things that have not.

“A Rose for Emily” and “Shiloh” are both set in the South, and both take place during times of change. In “A Rose for Emily,” the Grierson house was located on what had once been the “most select street” (80) but as the town changed the house had become crowded by “garages and cotton gins” (80). During the course of the story, the town of Jefferson gets its sidewalks paved, and free postal delivery is made available to all the residents. Emily, who “alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door,” (85) for the purpose of postal delivery, also refused to acknowledge the passage of time in any other way. The character of Leroy in “Shiloh” is much the same as Emily in that he fears and dislikes the changes brought by the passage of time. In the story “Shiloh,” Leroy notices with uneasiness that “subdivisions are spreading across western Kentucky like and oil slick” (69) and that “the farmers who used to gather around the courthouse square on Saturday afternoons to play checkers and spit tobacco juice have gone” (69). The “grand and complicated” (70) houses of the new subdivisions depress Leroy, and his wife Norma Jean thinks that the log house Leroy longs to build would be “inappropriate here in the new subdivisions” (70).

It would be interesting for people 100 years from now to compare the characters of Emily Grierson, Homer Baron, Leroy Moffitt, and Norma Jean Moffitt, and also it would also be interesting for them to compare the relationships between the two couples. Emily, who in some respects was a typical woman of her day, was dominated by the wishes of her father as a young woman, and later her treatment at the hands of Homer Baron became the main issue of her life.