The Relationships Between Children Essay Research Paper

The Relationships Between Children Essay, Research Paper

If we compare William Faulkner’s two short stories, “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning“, he structures the plots of these two stories differently. However, both of the stories note the effect of a father’s teaching, and in both the protagonists Miss Emily and Sarty make their own decisions about their lives. The stories present major idea through symbolism that includes strong metaphorical meaning. Both stories affect my thinking of life.

Both “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning” address the influence of a father, and the protagonists of both stories make their own decisions. Miss Emily Grierson is a lonely old woman, living a life void of all love and affection and who is violated by her father‘s strict mentality. Throughout the life of Emily Grierson, she remains locked up, never experiencing love from anyone but her father. She lives a life of loneliness, left only to dream of the love missing from her life. The domineering attitude of Emily’s father keeps her to himself, inside the house, and alone until his death. In his own way, Emily’s father shows her how to love. Through a forced obligation to love only him, as he drives off young male callers, he teaches his daughter lessons of love. It is this dysfunctional love that resurfaces later, because it is the only way Emily knows how to love. Her father who prevents her from dating with any young man until she is thirty. Her father’s deed enhances her thirst for love and security. After her father died, she finally has the freedom of love. Like her father though, Miss Emily possesses a stubborn outlook towards life, she refuses to change and let go.

The event of her father’s death is a shock to Miss Emily because the guidance of her father is gone. This explains Miss Emily’s behavior after her father’s death as well as her reaction to another character Homer Barron. Homer Barron is the first lower-class person to reach Miss Emily after her father’s death. When she meets Homer Barron and thinks that she has found her true love. But opposite of what she wants, Homer is a homosexual: “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” (“A Rose for Emily”, 76). While Miss Emily is still distressed by her father’s death, homer’s affection brings Miss Emily out of her grief. Homer Barron therefore frees Miss Emily from her reserved nature. However, the news that Homer Barron is leaving town for another women pushes Miss Emily to the edge of insanity. While Miss Emily’s father and Homer Barron influences Miss Emily to have the confused personality she does, Faulkner also suggests her insane behavior may be inherited. The insanity of Miss Emily’s great aunt, old lady Wyatt, suggests that Miss Emily’s craziness may be passed on from her family line. By informing the reader about old lady Wyatt’s insanity, Faulkner foreshadows Miss Emily’s own madness. To keep Homer with her forever, Miss Emily chooses to murder Homer. “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and learning forward, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (“A Rose for Emily“, 78), Faulkner implies that Miss Emily actually sleeps with the corpse. She must love Homer deeply, to endure the rotten smell and appearance of the dead body. She even enjoys being with it. “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace” (“A Rose for Emily”, 78). Although she picks the most ridiculous way to express love, her courage to choose her own way of life compels admiration.

Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” takes place in the late nineteenth century South. Primarily a story about the relationship between father and son, the story presents itself through the use of symbolism. The most vital sign being fire. The fire is much like the main character in the story, Abner. Both Abner and the fire are uncontrollable and destroy anything in its way, having respect for nothing. Sarty, Abner’s son, dislikes what his father does out of acts of hate and tries to stop it. He attempts to put out the “fire” inside his father. He is sick of his family’s way of life and is ready for a change no matter what it takes, even if it means going against his own blood. No matter what is done, they can not stop Abner from lashing out and burning buildings. Through his sheer enjoyment of the negative sides of his anger and power, Abner rips his family apart. He does so by forcing his family to put up with the consequences of his actions. In a way, Faulkner writes as a moralist. He demonstrates, through his character Abner, why a reasonable approach to adversity and letdowns is necessary, to avoid allowing one’s problems to get so bad that they can engulf the subject like an inferno. In this story Mrs. DeSpain’s “nigger” acts loyally and tries to save his owner’s animals from the fire that were in the barn. Sarty’s father enjoys setting fires to burn down others properties. Sarty faces the problem between loyalty and honesty. On one hand, he wants to be loyal to his father; on the other hand, he does not endorse his father’s behavior. His father teaches him: “You’re getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you” (“Barn Burning“, 484). His father wants him to pledge loyalty to his own family, but Sarty ca