Comparison of Style and Purpose Term Paper

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Rose for Emily," which was authored by William Faulkner in 1930 and "The Yellow Wallpaper," that was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, both are intimate stories about women living in their particular times in the United States. In addition, both provide true insights into what it was like as a female living during these historic times. However, the styles of the two authors make the stories very different in their approach and effect on the readers.

"A Rose for Emily," told in five separate sections, is rich with the descriptions, plot structures and mood that made Faulkner such a dynamic and memorable writer. After only a few lines into his artistic work, the reader is transposed into that period and place. For example, when reading the second paragraph, one can easily imagine the look and style of the house: "It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps -- an eyesore among eyesores."

Yet Faulkner goes beyond describing the house by itself. He actually uses symbolic writing to compare the house with its owner, as if they had actually become one -- which, ironically, they had. Although a "slender woman in white" who held her head high and proud when young, later she had grown fat, gray-haired and old. Like her house, she is aged, graying and decayed.

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Even the "rose" in the title has a number of symbolic meanings: In its prime, the rose is a wondrous sight. However, it does not last long, but shrivels up and soon loses its fragrance and beauty. It is also a symbol of love, which, in this story, also withers and dies. During the Middle Ages, the rose was a symbol of martyrdom, another way to look at Emily's life. And, a rose is something that is placed on a grave, a foreshadowing of what is to come, which is another Faulkner literary style. A third-person narrator tells the story through a number of flashbacks of the past and foreshadowing of what is to come. Throughout the tale this storyteller moves back and forth through a series of events during the tragic life of Emily Grierson and her town. The pieces of the story are interwoven, just as Emily's life is interwoven with the townspeople.

Finally, is the ability of Faulkner to create mood in so few words -- in the case of the ending, just a strand of hair. Who cannot feel sorrow, pity, and yet disgust for Emily? "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray….....

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