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Comparing A Rose For Emily 'And Porphyria's Lover'

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Would you kill someone to make a moment last forever? In the short story “A Rose for Emily” and the poem “Porphyria’s Lover” characters decide to kill to keep those they love with them forever. Due to both works having murder as a primary plot point, they have many themes in common. The works share and differ on three key points- death, the portrayal of the killers, and the impact of social class. The two works take a similar approach to the idea of death preserving a moment. In both works the murderers are motivated by their love for their victim and their wish to stay with them forever. In “A Rose for Emily” the murderer, Miss Emily, kills Homer Barron so he would never be able to leave her. She was driven to murder because Homer was not …show more content…

Emily is higher class and she kills Homer, her lower-class lover. The speaker of “Porphyria’s Lover” is lower class and kills Porphyria, his higher class lover. Because of the different social statuses there is conflict in each relationship, so they could never truly be equal. Due to the time these stories were set in their relationships would always be seen as disgraceful, as a high-class woman marrying a low-class man was considered very shameful. Social class conflict is not a significant motivation to Emily, but it is to the speaker. The impact of social class is notable in “A Rose for Emily” to the extent that it made Emily lonely due to her father believing no man was good enough for his high-class daughter. In the poem, the speaker is bitter due to Porphyria not marrying him in fear of social shame. He believes she is too vain and is simply using him for entertainment. Once Porphyria shows the speaker that she does love him despite social class, he kills her so she could never change; the speaker takes comfort in her death as it froze the moment he felt she loved him. The speaker specifically describes Porphyria’s corpse as smiling and glad, so he believes she is happy and free now

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The murderers in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily and Andre Dubus's KIllings are both motivated by love. Emily is terrified of losing the man she loves, and Matt kills Strout because of his love for his son. Emily murders Homer, the man she is about to marry, because he wants to leave her; however, Matt kills in retaliation to his own son's murder. However, the crimes are different in that Emily's is preventative and Matt's is reactive. Because Emily kills Homer due to a choice that he has every right to make, her crime is less justified than Matt's.

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Comparing Murders in “Killings” and “A Rose for Emily” “Killings” by Andre Dubus and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner are two short stories where each protagonist commits a murder. Each author uses point of view and a small town setting in their stories to have the reader sympathize and form an attachment to the protagonist. However, while Dubus focuses primarily on the protagonist point of view, Faulkner separates the reader from the main character completely by using an outside perspective to tell their story. Within the opening paragraphs of “Killings”, Dubus introduces Matt Fowler and his family during the grieving process for his son, Frank.

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Not only that, as Homer becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, it scandalizes the town and increases the condescension and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and becoming involved with a man beneath her station. Even though Emily is from the high class family, it does not mean that she is living up to the pleasant lifestyle. As a matter of fact, she is actually living a gloomy and desolate life, which is essentially the opposite lifestyle expected for Emily's rank in society by the townspeople. Although Emily once represented a great southern tradition centering on the landed gentry with their vast holdings and considerable resources, Emily's legacy has devolved, making her more a duty and an obligation than a romanticized vestige of a dying order.

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It is clear that in her era, Miss Emily was seen as traditional American Southern women, who lived to become an inferior women to man but was later a burden to her society. She was a lady who was secluded from society, lived a psychopathic life, which at the end, and was no secret for the town’s people. While Miss Emily was alive, she lived in a secluded home of a single father, thus leading her to be dependent upon him. She did not have much of a socially engaged life, for her father drove men away. When he finally died, Miss Emily told the townspeople that he was not dead, and finally, on the third day, let the town’s people buried him (William Faulkner 1105).

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They both lack of sociality and romance and denial. Miss Brill and Emily Grierson both experience lonesome and rejection, and obviously neither of them know how to deal or cope with it. The way that Emily was raised with her father always pushing away anyone who tried to get involved in Emily’s life. In his eyes no one was good enough for his daughter, and this continued till the day he died. After Emily’s fathers death a man named Homer Barron walked into her life, and lest just say he wasn’t feeling the exact same way about her, or any other woman in that matter.

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When she was young, her father forbade any male suitors. Though she had limited relationships with men, Emily still socialized with the other townspeople ever so often, even holding pottery classes on some days. However, “After her father's death she went out very little” (Faulkner 2). Since her father was a dominant figure in her life, she could not cope with having to live by herself and adjust to life itself. Furthermore, because her father did not let her

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The value of romance and mortality resembles the theme of obsession, and is shown throughout the plots, and the characters in, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Birth Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Firstly, Faulkner illustrates obsession of romance through mortality. In addition, Emily’s obsessive illness of love over death it often seen throughout the plot. Lastly, Hawthorne demonstrates the obsession of mortality thorough romance, through the main protagonist, Aylmer in “The Birth Mark.” To compare, Emily and Aylmer believe their obsessive consequences was from the heart, despite their obsessive disorders.

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“We remembered all the young men her father had driven away” (453). Miss Emily’s father drove away young men interested in her, not allowing her to have a love life and therefore a life outside of him. This controlling treatment of Miss Emily by Mr. Grierson coincides with Emily’s fight to control her love life with Homer. “Because Homer himself had remarked - he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club - that he was not a marrying man” (454). If it weren’t for the fact that Miss Emily murdered Homer, he would have left her, therefore she used the murder as a way to keep him close to

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In Love and In Death William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, centers around a reclusive woman named Emily Grierson who is the protagonist of this story. Emily lives in Jefferson, Mississippi with her strict and over protective father who turns away any male suitor who shows any interest in her as he believes them to be unfit for his daughter. Emily and her father are regarded as upper-class southerners who live in a very nice home. The townspeople see Emily as a mysterious individual, often pitting her.

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The story "A Rose for Emily¨, tells the years of Emily´s life after her father's death and the towns reaction and thoughts based on her actions and events in her life. After her father's death she isolated herself from the whole town and rejected every man in the town.

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In this short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the authors represent the sense of horror in their stories. They are very similar in expressing their terrifying point of view. However, there are also differences. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is told in the first person perspective which creates compulsory picture of a mad murdered, whereas the third person perspective of “A Rose for Emily” shows Miss Emily through the eyes of others, which changes the narrative radically. In Addition, Miss Emily committed the crime because the fear of being alone.

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The value of romance and mortality resembles the theme of obsession, and is shown throughout the plots, and the characters in, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Birth Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Firstly, Faulkner illustrates obsession of romance through mortality. In addition, Emily’s obsessive illness of love over death it often seen throughout the plot. Lastly, Hawthorne demonstrates the obsession of mortality thorough romance, through the main protagonist, Aylmer in “The Birth Mark.” To compare, Emily and Aylmer believe their obsessive consequences was from the heart, despite their obsessive disorders.

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Emily is judged for loving a man who is less fortunate than her . In the following line the townspeople’s reactions to their relationship is obvious, “’Poor Emily’, the whispering began. ‘Do you suppose it’s really so?’ they said to one another” (102). The townspeople did not to much care for the relationship between the two because of the barriers set up by social class saying poor date the poor and rich date the rich.

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Death, which is present as a plot, theme and symbol. It is the most one of the defining elements written in the modern literatures. Death, Sorrow and Isolation are just part of our lives, even though it is the miserable thing that people go through. In the poem “A Dead Rose,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the short story “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner there are many similarities and differences. The main similarity that both author’s has developed in their poem or story is the way how characters share the same atmosphere, symbolism of sadness, and isolation.

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