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Essay on the change in society
Changes in society Essay
Essay about changes in society
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As time goes on, things change whether it is people or the things around them. Some can cope with the changes while others deny it and try their hardest to resist it. They refuse to acknowledge that things are no longer how they use to be and try to remain the same. They continue to stay in their own world where they can keep living in their memories. Sometimes people do this to uphold tradition and customs. Others do this because they do not want to stop reliving the past. In the stories ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find ’, ‘A Rose for Emily and ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’ three women continue to stay back in time despite the time moving around them. They are aware of the differences that surrounds them but continue to ignore them in favor of remaining the same. Because of this, all three women go through a struggle and in the end meet their own changing fate. In ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’, Julian and his mother always reminisce on how their lives use to be. Their family use to own a big house on a plantation and great wealth. After slaves gained their freedom, they soon lost most of their money and their house. Julian’s mother lost her status as an important woman but still tries to uphold her dignity as if she was still rich. She still pictures herself as this important person and tries to keep up the appearance that she still has money by buying a new hat and wearing gloves to her fitness class. She also tells people that her son graduated from college. Julian and his mother has a little argument about people not caring who she was and she replies, “I care who I am” (O'Connor 410). Because she refuses to accept the changes happening around her, she is constantly in her own world. She is unaware of the reality... ... middle of paper ... ...portunity to go and look through the house. That is when they discover a dark secret of Emily. They find the decaying body of Homer lying in Emily's bed. All of her life her father has controlled her life. When he dies, she refuses to give up his body to finally have some control over him but eventually buries the body at the requests of the townspeople. When Homer comes back to her house she kills him to keep complete control and power over him. These three women were 'stuck' in time but were soon brought back to reality by an unfortunate accident. Their inner world gets destroyed and they are unable to deal with it in a good way. While upholding traditions are fine always being stuck in the past can hold people back from enjoying the world around them. It also keeps the mind closed off; making people unable to understand what is going on around them.
In her short story "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Flannery O'Connor allows the story to be told from the perspective of Julian, a recent college graduate who appears to be waiting for a job, while living at home with his mother. His relationship with his mother is rocky at times, to say the least. It is constantly mired with conflicts about the "Old South" and the "New South". Julian must come to terms with himself, either he is an over protective son or just a pain in her ass. Even though Julian seems to dislike his mother's viewpoints, he continues to depends on her for "stability". When the final confrentation between Julian's mother and the large black women results in her having a heart attack, to which Julian is oblivious to, it causes him to be overwhelmed with greif and fear. He only then realizes the extent of his self-deception is fully confirmed.
...to take it anymore. Julian's mother didn't realize this, she thought she was being "gracious." The stroke Julian's mother receives at the end is a direct result of her failure to adapt to her current setting.
The poem “I Go Back to May 1937” written in 1987 by poet and writer Sharon Olds, is based on a child’s perspective on her parent’s marriage that is destined to fail and the child’s wishes to go back and stop them from making the mistake of marriage. The poem is told from the perspective of the couple’s future child, who ultimately goes back in time to try and convince them that their marriage would be a mistake. Although this creates conflict, as by preventing the couple from marriage would ultimately lead to the end of her own existence. Olds uses imagery, conflict and symbolism to show the differences between the couple and their child’s emotions and feelings about their ill-fated marriage.
The short story "Everything That Rises Must Converge" centers on the relationship between Julian, a young man who has recently graduated from college, and his mother. It takes place in a city in the South soon after integration. Much like Emily Grierson in William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily," Julian’s mother is a product of the "Old South." She takes tremendous pride in her heritage due to the fact that her ancestors were people who were once very highly respected. Her grandfather was a former state governor as well as a plantation and slave owner. Julian sees his mother as a dinosaur who is a product of the past and cannot see and accept the realities of the present. The fact that she clings to her old values embarrasses him, and he sees her more as a child who does not know any better.
We eventually find out in the end that Emily kills Homer. She does this not do this out anger or hatred toward this man. It is the belief on her part, that a man has to play a significant role in her life that drives Emily to do this unbelievable act of violence. In her mind this was not a crazy thing to do.
“Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor, is a story of the relationship between a mother and son and their differing views. The story is in third person point of view, which means none of the characters is the narrator, however, it does show Julian’s thoughts during the story. The third person narrator focuses on Julian, his mother, and their relationship which is a “parasitic relationship [that] establishes the prototype for parent and child figures” (Winn 192). Julian, despite being an adult, still lives with his mother and has a childlike attachment to her. His mother has a “deep connection of her identity with the intergenerational ties of family and history, but it also has the effect of eliding her individual identity
...s obsessive with keeping homer by her side forever. Miss Emily becomes mentally unstable and poisons homer. I do believe that the fatalities and changes she goes through have a greater effect on her emotions and actions than the townspeople and readers see without analyzing the story. Argiro states that, “The story is an allegory of misreading signifying backwardness, mystification and psychopathology…” (par.50). Miss Emily is misunderstood by the townspeople and is resistant to the changes around her as well in her life.
Homer was the main representative of Yankee views towards the Griersons and the entire South, a situation of the present. Emily held the view of the past as if it were a rose-tinted place where nothing would ever die. Her world was already the past. Whenever the modern times were about to take hold of her, she retreated to that world of the past, and took Homer with her. Her room upstairs was that place, a place where Emily could stay with dead Homer forever as though no death nor disease could separate them.
...left on what was once one of the most selected street. The house was alone on that street. Emily’s father had died and she was alone and didn’t know what to do. She found Homer Barron, but he claims he liked men and wasn’t a marrying type. She killed him because she didn’t want him to ever leave. She had nothing to fall back on. She eventually grows sick and dies. She died alone. The house and her were alone with nothing in the world to fall back on.
Her necrophilia is realized first when she refused the death of her father as she desperately clings to the father figure who disciplined her into loneliness. It was the only form of love she knew. It is once realized when Homer dies, however, this time it is with her hands that death has come upon it. She almost actually controlled it. She denied the changes, the possibilities of Homer leaving her, of refusing to marry her, by cutting his timeline—preserving him in death, effectively. Emily and Homer’s weird cohabitation divulges Emily’s upsetting effort to marry life and death. However, death ultimately triumphs.
At the beginning of the story when her father died, it was mentioned that “[Emily] told [the ladies in town] that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (626). Faulkner reveals Emily’s dependency on her father through the death of her father. As shown in this part of the story, Emily was very attached to her father and was not able to accept that fact that he was no longer around. She couldn’t let go of the only man that loved her and had been with her for all those years. While this may seem like a normal reaction for any person who has ever lost a loved one, Faulkner emphasizes Emily’s dependence and attachment even further through Homer Barron. After her father’s death, Emily met a man name Homer, whom she fell in love with. While Homer showed interest in Emily at the beginning he became uninterested later on. “Homer himself had remarked—he liked men” (627) which had caused Emily to become devastated and desperate. In order to keep Homer by her side, Emily decided to poison Homer and keep him in a bedroom in her home. It was clear that she was overly attached to Homer and was not able to lose another man that she
She desperately desired to pursue a life of love and happiness but because of her father, knew of no other way to live her life beyond his control. “Being left alone, and a pauper, [Emily has] become humanized” (3) in the eyes of the townspeople due to freedom from her father’s authority. She was free to be her own person and live her own life. Shortly after her father’s death, an opportunity for Emily to pursue love is given when Homer Barron, a lively, middle class Northerner, comes to the town. Being an outsider, Homer knew nothing of Emily or of her past, leaving Emily an open door to the pursuit of a uncontrolled love. He is the first man to know Emily without knowing her father first, allowing her to choose him based off of her own desires. Soon after his arrival, the town began to see “[Homer] and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in [a] yellow wheeled buggy” (4), their first glimpses of Emily outside of her house since the death of her father. The presence of Homer in Emily’s life has a significant impact on her reputation and character. As a woman of high class, it is seen as untraditional and pitiful for Emily to be seen with Homer. Yet, her relentless pursuit of her free desires causes Emily to manipulate such societal expectations into a step up for her to get what she wants without question. “It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson [and] to reaffirm her imperviousness” (4). Emily’s idea of love for Homer is merely shaped by the controlling love from the only other man in her life- her father- of whom stood as barrier between Emily and real concept of
period in her life. These parts are prime examples of how Faulkner jumps back and forth throughout Emily’s lifetime. Part one begins with Emily’s funeral while part two begins “thirty years before”, “two years after her fathers death and a short time after her sweetheart”, Homer Barron. (93) Part three begins with her meeting Homer. This is interesting because the part before takes place after he dies. This also shows how Faulkner keeps one guessing with his unorthodox plot order. The next part talks of how Emily is planning to supposedly kill herself. It tells of how she buys the...
Faulkner then introduces someone of Miss Emily 's interest, a day-laborer in town, Homer Barron. They were seen together a lot. At first, everyone believed they were to be married, but Homer was not the marrying kind. Although Miss Emily takes a liking to Homer, he is not interested in "settling down". Miss Emily soon enters a depressive state and goes to purchase arsenic, leaving the townspeople to believe she planned on killing herself. Miss Emily found out that Homer wasn 't going to marry her and she couldn 't bear the fact she would have to lose someone all over again, putting her in the mindset that she had to find a way to be able to keep him forever. Homer Barron had been seen entering the home of Miss Emily but never seen leaving. As the story goes on, Miss Emily passes away at seventy-four. Faulkner ends his story with the way he opened it, with Miss Emily 's funeral. The town came to see her and broke down a door to a back room that hadn 't been opened in forty years. When the townspeople approached the room, they found a corpse of a man lying in the bed, with a long strand of gray hair by the
...she believed might be the only way to keep the man she loved from leaving her. Out of desperation for human love, when she realized Homer would leave her she murdered him so she could at least cling to his body. In his death, Emily finally found eternal love that no one could every take from her.