Essay on Hawthorne To Faulkner: The Evolution Of The Short Story

The dialogue, action and motivation revolve about the characters in the story (Abrams 32-33). It is the purpose of this essay to demonstrate the types of characters present in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” whether static or dynamic, whether flat or round, and whether protrayed through showing or telling.

Emily’s upbringing is plagued with difficulties. She is the first-born of a young mother and the eldest of five brothers and sisters. As a baby, she is

“Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 1). Emily, a member of the town’s elite class, relied upon her father when growing up and after his death, she refused to pay her taxes, stating that her father contributed much to society. But it was evident that she didn’t pay them because of a lack of maturity - financially and socially. When she was younger she pushes herself onto Homer Barron, a Northerner with no interest in marriage. Throughout the story, Emily is conflicted over societal change, and clings to her privileged manner even after finding herself in poverty. Yet, she becomes involved with a man from a lower social class, and a Northerner as well - hinting that he has different beliefs and values. The townspeople, however, believe the relationship it too modern when there is a possibility they are having physical relations despite not being serious about marriage. The community’s inability to commit to progress, contribute to the confused Emily’s decision. In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner uses the symbolism of Emily’s house and her hair to demonstrate her emotional instability and physical deterioration, illustrating the outcome of his story.

My ultimate take is that Faulkner portrayed her to have a dark soul. Emily lived in disgust for someone who held themselves to such a higher standard than most people. He portrayed this not only by her actions but also on the description of her home inside and out. The people in the town felt sorry for her quite possibly because she was alone, perhaps this is why they put up with her in the manner they

Emily's father suppressed all of her inner desires. He kept her down to the point that she was not allowed to grow and change with the things around her. When “garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated…only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps” (Rose 217). Even when he died, she was still unable to get accustom to the changes around her. The traditions that her and her father continued to participate in even when others stopped, were also a way that her father kept her under his thumb. The people of the town helped in

She is a lonely old spinster with the exception of her loyal black servant. Her aristocratic family was once wealthy and influential in the local community. That all became lost in the aftermath of the Civil War. Her troubled upbringing affected Emily severely. Emily’s father was overprotective and keep her close to him at all times. When he died, Emily had no experience being by herself and something her inside in her mind snapped. She was in debt, her family’s manor fell into despair, and she simply lost touch of reality and was in constant denial, for instance “See Colonel Sartorius. I have no taxes in Jefferson.” The man she was referring to had been dead for a decade and waived her from paying taxes only because of her “situation.” The city government controlled by the next generation most likely understood at that point she was insane and left her

Being a member of an antebellum southern aristocracy meant that she was in a family that was defined as a “planter” also known as a person owning property and twenty or more slaves. After the Civil War, the family went through another hardship. The woman and her father kept on living their lives as if they were still in the past. Her father refused to let her get married. When the woman was thirty years old, her father died. This took her by surprise. After her dad passed, the woman refused to give up his body. The town thought it was just part of her grieving process. After she finally accepted her dad’s death, she grew closer to Mr. Homer. This took the town by surprise. Homer explained to Emily that he wasn’t the marrying type. She did not like hearing those words. Emily went to town and bought arsenic from a drug dealer. Because of this, the towns people were certain she was trying to kill herself. Emily’s distant cousins came to visit because the priest’s wife had called them. Homer left for a couple of days, but then came back after the cousins had left. Emily wouldn’t talk to any of the towns people. They wouldn’t confront her given her reputation. They wanted to ask her about the awful smell that had been coming from her house and to talk to her about her taxes. At first, they said her taxes were over looked in debt to her father, but then they changed their minds and sent her notices. The woman refused to pay them! Years later Emily had

Emily was a very stubborn and hard headed woman throughout the story. In the beginning of the story, Emily was a young lady who lived at home with her father. He had no intentions of allowing any man to marry his daughter so any man who ever came to the house to call upon his daughter was ran off before they could even get one foot onto the porch.

A woman, that has lived with pain in the recent years, has finally hit her lowest point in her life. Driven by love and depression, she murdered her husband, Homer Barron, because he did not love her back. Emily did indeed have a mental illness that drove her into disparity and isolation, and eventually lead her to murder her homosexual husband. The main reasons for this inference are embedded within the textual evidence in the story. Within the story we see her isolated from the townspeople, sleeping in her bed with the rotted corpse of her ex husband, and speech problems when the tax collectors converse with her at the emily estate.

One way that Faulkner manipulates the point of view within the story is by having the narrator use an omniscient first-person narration that tell us the events from the perspective of the townspeople. The narrator relays information about Emily to the readers in a gossip-like manner, where they only receive small bits and pieces of information. An example of this is when the townspeople are talking about the reason as to why Ms. Emily Grierson went and bought arsenic. The townspeople had thoughts that “'She will kill herself'”, but little did they know of the true intentions she had for the poison (Faulkner 35). There is also the time when Ms. Grierson is seen being intimate with Homer Barron, and the townspeople

Emily grew into believing things about herself that weren't even true because the belief of having a happy home was not true to her. This left her Mother with no choice but to believe that her daughter was

Many American writers have scrutinized religion through their works of literature, however none had the enthusiasm of Nathaniel Hawthorne. A handful of Hawthorne's works are clear critiques of seventeenth century Puritan society in New England. Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown and The Scarlet Letter illustrate his assessment by showing internal battles within characters, hypocrisy in religious figures, atypical punishment for crimes, and accenting women's roles in Puritan society. Firstly, Hawthorne's literature often stresses internal battles in main characters. In both Young Goodman Brown and The Scarlet Letter, these battles are

   Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown,” shows the reader the author’s power as a symbolist.

Emily behaves the way she does for numerous reasons. She is born into an aristocratic family. Emily is brought up as a Southern belle by her father and is placed on a pedestal by the townspeople. The Grierson’s are known in town for being extremely wealthy and having the nicest house in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County. Due to the fact that her father, Mr. Grierson, keeps her isolated and socially restricted as a child, she behaves abnormally. Emily feels as if she is pressured to live up to her father’s expectations. Because Emily is kept away from everything, she is not yet exposed to the real world.

of a baby out of marriage, which was unacceptable for the unmarried women. She knows