Compare and Contrast

Introduction to Literature

A Rose For Emily / Soldier 's Home

Comparison /Contrast

William Faulkner 's short story , A Rose For Emily , was originally published in an April 1930 edition of Saturday Evening Post . It is a gothic grotesque , and at first glance appears to have little in common with the short story , Soldier 's Home , by Ernest Hemingway . Hemingway 's story appears to be the tale of a soldier newly returned home from service in World War I . A Rose For Emily appears to be the straight forward account of the

life of a southern aristocrat , a genteel lady who seems to have survived into a later age , and stands , in the story , as a relic , or even a monument to that way of life long gone from the American South . Faulkner says that her funeral was well attended for various reasons . .the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument (Faulkner 47 . Upon reading the two , similarities can be found in the works , penned by giants of 20th century American literature . The protagonist in each short story is alienated and feels no longer a part of a little understood society , as if life has somehow managed to pass them by . Emily and Harold both withdraw into their own private world (Hemingway 112 . The narrator of Faulkner 's work is more involved and takes sides , so to speak , in voiced judgment of Miss Emily Hemmingway 's narrator , on the other hand , is lifeless and flat , and while he may be omniscient , he is not descriptive , and shares little with the reader other than the bare bones of necessity . The two works are both alike in some ways and unalike in others

A Rose For Emily is a tale of the final days of what was once the post-bellum American South , and is considered a grotesque . It evokes the spirit of Mary Shelly or even Bram Stoker in its proximity to pure horror . The reader learns that not only is the cultivated and very proper Miss Emily Grierson a murderess , having poisoned her lover , but is a necrophile , sleeping with the rotting corpse each night of her life . What was left of him , rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt , had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay (Faulkner 59 ) the narrator says , describing the appearance of the corpse in Emily Grierson 's bed . In this manner she has passed her adult life behind the closed doors of her decaying gothic mansion , living out her days in genteel poverty while maintaining the illusion that she is still what she and her family had once been . At her death the town gathers both to pay respects to a vanished Americana and to see firsthand the inner sanctum of a legend . Harold Krebs , Hemingway 's protagonist , also has opted to turn his back on society and let his life drift along on the winds of fate . In the evening he .read and went to bed ' the narrator tells the reader (Hemingway 112 . He sleeps late , he ignores women unless they make a gesture to him and he lets the world go by . His mother worries and tries to get him out of this doldrum that she believes is war related . The end of the Faulkner story is resolved with the death of his protagonist and the denouement of her particular proclivity . For Hemingway the ending is more a whimper than a bang and the reader is left to decide whether the protagonist 's new outlook on life is good or ill

Emily Grierson , the daughter of a rich man , once had more than mere money she was born into a way of life that was vanishing as she grew up . Her father had turned down every suitor who had come calling for Miss Emily on the grounds that they were beneath her socially . The end result was that she found herself an `old maid ' at the age of 30 , with little prospect of ever finding a man to take in marriage . Faulkner 's narrator shows the reader various sides of Miss Emily , with the title of the story being a symbolic accolade , a rose , presented to a Southern monument , a woman worthy of a retrospective . Still this anonymous voice also shows the reader the perversity and the insanity inherent in the character . She , like Harold Krebs of Soldier 's Home , has opted to drop out of life and let it pass by unexamined . Harold , returning late from the war finds that it is no longer news , and no one cares what he did or why he did it . Even his loving mother is ready for him to begin his life . She is quoted as asking , Have you decided what you are going to do yet , Harold (Hemingway 115 . He is a classic example of the old adage that God and the soldier are both ignored once danger has passed Unlike Miss Emily , however , the reader gets no clear conclusion and is left to form an opinion as to the outcome of Krebs ' attitude toward life . While everyone wants him to be the same man he was when he left for war , he clearly is not , nor does he intend to ever be . While Emily Grierson wants marriage and perhaps loses her mind over a lost love , in contrast , Harold Krebs attitude flies in the face of convention and he is not interested in the fair sex . He has developed an attitude that he will be most happy just simply being left alone

The setting of A Rose For Emily is the old south and the mansion of Miss Emily Grierson . The writing evokes a southern charm and southern manners which may not have ever existed but are still burned into the collective memories of generations of readers . It is Gone With The Wind revisited She , like Harold Krebs , withdrew unto herself . Faulkner 's lines , A deputation waited upon her , knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier (Faulkner 48 ) illustrates her near It is Margaret Mitchell with just a dash of Stephen King added for flavoring . A small town in rural 20th century America is the stage upon which Soldier 's Home plays out . In contrast to the changes that have taken place in Emily Grierson 's town , Harold Krebs finds nothing has changed in his hometown . It is he who has been transformed and not the rest of society as is the case with Emily

The narrator of A Rose For Emily is difficult to pin down as his point of view changes as the story progresses , making him an integral part of the story as well as the voice . He has opinions and makes judgment as the story progresses . It is as if he is the voice of the community at large , and reflects the attitude that the community has toward the aging woman . When it is obvious that the woman has been in a nightly tryst with a decaying corpse the voice of the narrator changes judgmentally The narrator of Soldier 's Home is flat and uninvolved . He is detached and emotionless , as a rhetorical device he is the omniscient source of information and reflects the flat emotionless life of the protagonist He is , in many ways , a metaphor for Harold Krebs as Emily 's narrator is a metaphor for the changing attitudes and mores of the new American South

The two stories share many similarities but fundamentally they are more unalike than similar . Just as all works that qualify to bear the title of literature share basic structure and rhetorical devices , so too do these two works . In the final analysis they are not the same or even overly similar they stand as monuments to the skills of their two authors and are both a part of American literary heritage today

Works Cited

Faulkner , W . Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner New York Random

House 1993

Hemingway , E . The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway : The Finca

Vigia Edition New York : Simon and Schuster Inc . 1987

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