On Isolation In A Rose For Emily And A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Isolation is a reality that an unfortunate amount of people around the world have to deal with daily. Coping with it can pressure people to the brink of insanity. Two examples of stories dealing with seclusion are “A Rose for Emily” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”. In both stories, the characters are forced to handle the loneliness and despair in their lives. Through the use of setting and characterization, Faulkner and Hemingway both show that isolation drives people to find strange ways to cope. The setting in each story indicates the isolation felt by the characters. In “A Rose for Emily,” the protagonist’s house is described as a giant, decaying structure sitting on a street that had once been an exclusive neighborhood, but is now surrounded
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Throughout Emily’s youth, her father drives out all of the men that vie to be her suiter. He was adamant that no man was good enough for her daughter and “ensured that she was kept isolated”(How Does). When he dies, she is abandoned and husbandless at thirty years old- far past her prime. At first, she refuses to accept it and tells everyone that “her father was not dead,” but she eventually breaks down. When she meets Homer, she develops a liking for him and doesn’t want to lose him like she lost her father, so she kills him. Somehow, Emily managed to cope with her isolation by making death seem not so terminating. Her one true love is a dead corpse that she keeps in her bed, and she doesn’t see anything wrong with that as a result of all her years of solitude. In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” we are introduced to a drunken old man at a café. As the waiters talk, we learn that he is deaf, and that he tried to kill himself the week before. He used to have a wife, but now his niece takes care of him. He enjoys going to the café to feel part of something again, but it is not enough. The old man’s loneliness drives him to attempt to kill himself, which was his way to cope with the isolation. Like Emily, the old man resorted to death to deal with his seclusion, although the life he was taking was his own, not someone else’s. Being lonely can cause people to confront
Throughout Emily’s youth, her father drives out all of the men that vie to be her suiter. He was adamant that no man was good enough for her daughter and “ensured that she was kept isolated”(How Does). When he dies, she is abandoned and husbandless at thirty years old- far past her prime. At first, she refuses to accept it and tells everyone that “her father was not dead,” but she eventually breaks down. When she meets Homer, she develops a liking for him and doesn’t want to lose him like she lost her father, so she kills him. Somehow, Emily managed to cope with her isolation by making death seem not so terminating. Her one true love is a dead corpse that she keeps in her bed, and she doesn’t see anything wrong with that as a result of all her years of solitude. In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” we are introduced to a drunken old man at a café. As the waiters talk, we learn that he is deaf, and that he tried to kill himself the week before. He used to have a wife, but now his niece takes care of him. He enjoys going to the café to feel part of something again, but it is not enough. The old man’s loneliness drives him to attempt to kill himself, which was his way to cope with the isolation. Like Emily, the old man resorted to death to deal with his seclusion, although the life he was taking was his own, not someone else’s. Being lonely can cause people to confront