What Is The Difference Between Battle Royal And A Rose For Emily

The South had very conflicting ideas during the 20th century, Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” are excellent pieces of literature that convey the struggles the South had changing their philosophy. Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” is about a young black teenager trying to deliver a speech in a place with a relatively large white population. Ellison tells the story of the struggles black people went through in the South and uses the young teenager to illustrate black people’s fight for equality in the South. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is about an old lady everyone steers clear of because of the way she portrays herself. Faulkner uses the old lady to represent the South’s inability to change with

In Ellison’s story, he uses a young female to portray inequality in the South. While the black teenagers were given an opportunity to give a speech they were taken to an anteroom where they saw the town's most influential white men around a naked woman. This woman hated what she was doing but did it anyway and when she tried to escape “they caught her just as she reached a door… I saw the terror and disgust in her eyes,” but they were not allowed to do anything because she was a woman and they were black, the naked woman symbolizes the inequality women suffered in the South. In Faulkner’s story, he uses Emily as a way to symbolize the old south. Emily was set to marry a man named Homer Barron but, “Homer himself had remarked — he liked men”. Homer Barron being homosexual is meant to represent change in the South, but Emily killing Homer is a way to represent the old South’s reluctance to accept change. Symbolism can be a very powerful literary element as it allows the reader to think for themselves and come up with their own interpretation of the

In Ralph Ellison’s story, he illustrates that the South is unfair and doesn’t allow the same opportunities for black people as it does for white people. This is evident when the narrator of the story wants to develop a speech but before he could do that he was blindfolded and “felt a sudden fit of blind terror…I could hear the bleary voices yelling insistently for the battle royal to begin.” The battle royal is a fight to determine who gets to deliver their speech. This fight is meant to symbolize the inequality black people went through in the South for even simple things such as a speech. In William Faulkner’s story, he illustrates the South’s inability to change with the times. This is apparent when the board of alderman comes to collect money for her past taxes. While Emily is meant to symbolize the old South and their ways, the board of alderman is meant to symbolize the new generation of the South. The board of aldermen, “[O]n the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply.” This represents the old South not wanting to change and rejecting the new